Epstein's Co-Conspirators Named + Trump's $100K Dow Prediction | PBD #736

What this episode is about

The discussion centers on various current events, including the recent shutdown of the El Paso airport and the implications of Epstein's co-conspirators being named in newly released files. Additionally, guests debate the future of gold and cryptocurrencies, aiming to forecast market trends and the potential economic impact of these developments.

Key takeaways

• In a world of uncertainty, longing for sweet victory may just fuel our fire for greatness.
• El Paso's airport closure raises more questions than answers—what's lurking beneath the surface?
• Job hunters paying recruiters? Desperation morphs into a bold new economy—who's really in control?
• Gold enthusiasts foresee staggering prices—do they see a glittering future or just gilded dreams?
• As Trump predicts economic triumph, January layoffs remind us: fortune favors the bold, but resilience wins.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Peter Schiff (Guest)
• Luke Groman (Guest)
• Luke Gorman (Guest)
• Congressman Adam Smith (Guest)

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 15:00: United States (states), Donald Trump, Artificial Intelligence, Luke Gorman
2. 15:00 – 30:00: inflation, Wall Street, World War II, Donald Trump
3. 30:00 – 45:00: Bitcoin, inflation, Donald Trump, Scott Besson
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00: Jeffrey Epstein, Bitcoin, El Paso, Epstein Files
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00: Jeffrey Epstein, Department of Justice, Sultan Ahmed bin Suleyam, Peter Schiff
6. 1:15:00 – 1:30:00: H-1B, Wall Street, Donald Trump, Fox News
7. 1:30:00 – 1:45:00: Donald Trump, inflation, United States (states), Venezuela
8. 1:45:00 – 2:00:00: United States (states), reserve currency, Donald Trump, Cold War
9. 2:00:00 – 2:15:00: California, Super Bowl, Tai Lopez, jock tax
10. 2:15:00 – 2:18:26: Peter Schiff, Nuclear energy

Notable quotes from "Epstein's Co-Conspirators Named + Trump's $100K Dow Prediction | PBD #736"

• Going on we don't know about? Did Mexico's airport across the street from El Paso shut down? It didn't. So is there something we know? Are they reporting any of this stuff?…

  about Gold · at 1:03

• Of revisions. the Department of Labor, a little bit politicized, more than a little bit. they tend to go back and revise. What this has done to the market today, though, is…

  about inflation · at 6:04

• Literally in the last month, month and a half, two months of just AI is fundamentally incompatible with the system as it's structured. incompatible with the system that's…

  about United States (states) · at 9:45

• Instead of raising rates, which they should be doing, they're cutting rates. They're doing that because they have no control. So let me do that. Let me go to the story here.…

  about Donald Trump · at 16:32

• You devalue the currency. And so what I think is... Trump is telling us is that we're gonna run a version of the playbook that we ran in World War II. So during World War II…

  about Luke Groman · at 19:02

• It makes the numbers bigger. And so it creates the illusion that you're getting richer even as you're getting poorer. Now, talking about illusions, when you talk about Bitcoin…

  about Bitcoin · at 38:12

• One of the very first people to call when people found out that authorities were investigating Epstein for sex with girls as young as 14, whom he had hired to give a massage.…

  about Jeffrey Epstein · at 56:37

• Dodge. But I don't think that's going to work. I think there's too many holes in this bubble right now. Let me go to this. Here's Scott Bessent. Rob, if you want to pull up…

  about Peter Schiff · at 1:14:11

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Peter Schiff — Person · Main guest · 6 mentions · first at 4:46
  Primary macro commentator arguing the economy is weaker than reported, inflation higher, and gold signals a coming USD/sovereign-debt crisis; he also strongly criticizes Trump’s economic policies and Bitcoin’s value proposition.
• Donald Trump — Person · Referenced political figure / policy driver · 12 mentions · first at 2:03
  Central reference point for claims about Dow 100,000, Fed chair pick (Warsh), tariffs, border/crime narratives, and alleged interactions around Epstein; guests debate whether his agenda helps Main Street or accelerates a dollar/debt crisis.
• Luke Groman — Person · Main guest · 3 mentions · first at 4:46
  Co-lead macro guest presenting a framework that the U.S. is in a sovereign-debt corner and will likely pursue financial repression/yield-curve-control-like policies; also discusses AI-driven labor disruption and views Bitcoin as a liquidity ‘smoke alarm.’
• Jeffrey Epstein — Person · Referenced subject of scandal / investigative focus · 29 mentions · first at 1:13
  Used as the anchor for discussion of ‘Epstein files,’ redactions, named individuals, and reputational/credibility disputes; Trump and others’ proximity to Epstein is debated as new documents and clips are cited.
• Gileain Maxwell — Person · Referenced alleged associate / legal witness figure · 4 mentions · first at 2:56
  Discussed as an ‘operative’ and as invoking the Fifth Amendment in questioning; her role is used to illustrate the severity of allegations and the ongoing opacity/redactions around the Epstein materials.
  Paulina Luna and a bunch of the, representatives to come in and take a look. You can't record anything. You can't take your phone. And they all came out disgusted, the things…
• Scott Besson — Person · Referenced expert · 4 mentions · first at 21:22
  Mentioned in discussions about economic growth and market predictions.
  To my eyes, what the Trump administration appears to be doing is trying to reverse that. Listen to what Scott Besson has said repeatedly. It's the time for Main Street, not…
• Congressman Ro Khanna — Person · Referenced expert · 2 mentions · first at 1:13
  Mentioned in the context of the Epstein files and political actions.
  Play this one here. This is Ro Khanna naming the six people that they finally mentioned yesterday. And one of them, the last name he mentions, I'm not surprised, but one of…
• Leslie Wexner — Person · Referenced billionaire named in disclosures · 1 mention · first at 1:04:56
  Named among the redacted individuals; discussed as a major Epstein-connected figure (Victoria’s Secret/L Brands founder) and used as an example of elite ties and unexplained benefits allegedly given to Epstein.
  Leonor, Nikola Kaputa, Sultan Ahmed bin Suleyam, CEO of Dubai Ports World, and billionaire businessman Leslie Wexner. Okay, Rob, so we know about Leslie Wexner. He's the…
• Tai Lopez — Person · Referenced expert · 4 mentions · first at 2:08:54
  Mentioned in the context of financial investigations and alleged schemes.
  Weird story. I don't know what you guys are going to say about this. If you have an opinion, great. If you don't, great. Great. Ty Lopez, did you guys follow the story, what…
• Massie and Kana — Person · Referenced lawmaker / source of disclosure · 3 mentions · first at 1:18
  Cited as the politician who ‘leaked’ or publicized names tied to redacted Epstein materials; used as a credibility/source node for what was revealed and what remains hidden.
  This stuff? We're going to talk about that as well. We have to end on, of course, with some of the stuff that was released with Epstein Files, with the six names that was just…
• Sultan Ahmed bin Suleyam — Person · Referenced expert · 3 mentions · first at 1:04:50
  Mentioned in the context of the Epstein files and associated individuals.
  And now they have revealed the identity of these six powerful men. These men are Salvatore Navarro, Zorab Mikolads, Lepig Leonor, Nikola Kaputa, Sultan Ahmed bin Suleyam, CEO…
• Sultan Ahmed bin Suliam — Person · Referenced executive named in disclosures · 2 mentions · first at 1:04:50
  Named as one of the previously redacted individuals; discussed via alleged email excerpts in the transcript context, tying him to Epstein communications and raising reputational/ethical questions.
  And now they have revealed the identity of these six powerful men. These men are Salvatore Navarro, Zorab Mikolads, Lepig Leonor, Nikola Kaputa, Sultan Ahmed bin Suleyam, CEO…
• Luke Gorman — Person · Main guest (name variant / likely misspelling) · 3 mentions · first at 4:42
  Appears to refer to Luke Groman (FFTT founder). Transcript repeatedly uses 'Luke Groman'; 'Luke Gorman' is likely an extraction variant.
  Had spirit and we had the right incentives today we have A lot of socialism, a lot of communism, we have a lot of bad things. But there's no... You can pause it right there.…
• Joe Rogan — Person · Referenced expert · 2 mentions · first at 1:08:30
  Mentioned in the context of the Epstein files and public figures.
  Comes up. And they, they, they, apparently there was a moment where he wanted to meet with Rogan. This is Rogan's response. Go for it. I'm in the files for not going. Huh?…
• Jameson Greer — Person · Referenced expert · 1 mention · first at 22:13
  Mentioned in the context of economic policies and public figures.
  Because that is a sustainable that's a sustainable economic model at which hold on let me finish peter the.. Trade Representative Jamison Greer at Davos in a speech that's…
• Howard Lutnick — Person · Referenced expert · 1 mention · first at 1:08:22
  Mentioned in the context of the Epstein files and public figures.
  Lie and then they lie again to cover up the fact that they lied the first time. And so I'm sure that's going on and we're not getting the real story with respect to Epstein.…
• Martha Stewart — Person · Referenced expert · 1 mention · first at 2:11:38
  Mentioned in the context of financial regulations and public figures.
  They have no ability to pay higher taxes to reduce these deficits. I agree with one thing that you said. We're going to try to inflate them away. But the biggest losers in this…
• Mark Zuckerberg — Person · Referenced billionaire (news item) · 1 mention · first at 4:21
  Mentioned briefly as part of a broader story about California billionaires buying Florida homes, used to illustrate wealth migration and tax/regulatory dynamics.
  Economy as Dow hits historic milestone. Proposed ban on investors in the housing market hits a wall in Congress. Housing affordability package set to advance in Congress amid…
• Congressman Adam Smith — Person · Guest on the podcast · 1 mention · first at 0:12
  Clarifies which Adam is being referred to in the context of the discussion.
  Did you ever think you would make it? I feel I'm supposed to take sweet victory. I know this life meant for me. Adam, what's your point? The future looks bright. My handshake…

Books & papers

• Epstein Files — Book · Key argument · 7 mentions · first at 1:13
  Discussed in relation to recent leaks and the implications for public figures.
  Going on we don't know about? Did Mexico's airport across the street from El Paso shut down? It didn't. So is there something we know? Are they reporting any of this stuff?…

Companies & orgs

• Fed — Company · Key argument · 3 mentions · first at 2:10
  Central to discussions about monetary policy and economic management.
  The bomb. But now it's obviously going off. You could see it in the foreign exchange market. You could see it in the long-term treasury yields. Look how many times the Fed has…
• Holtec International — Company · Business focus · 1 mention · first at 2:13:51
  Discussed as a company poised for a significant IPO in the nuclear sector.
  Let me go to a different one. Tom chose this one. We'll wrap up with this one here. Nuclear sector is poised to be For its biggest IPO in years. So let's kind of go through…
• Wall Street — Company · 10 mentions · first at 7:46
  Negative numbers had they been reported accurately the first time. But the markets react to these numbers as if they're real. The government takes credit. The Fed was taking…
• FAA — Company · Key argument · 3 mentions · first at 49:17
  Mentioned in the context of the El Paso airport shutdown and aviation regulations.
  Days for unspecified special security reasons and they're warning that any pilots who don't comply quote may be intercepted detained interviewed by law enforcement el paso…
• Department of Justice — Company · Key argument · 3 mentions · first at 1:04:09
  Mentioned in the context of legal investigations and the Epstein files.
  About two hours there, and we learned... that 70 to 80 percent of the files are still redacted. In fact, there were six wealthy, powerful men that the DOJ hid for no apparent…
• FBI — Company · Key argument · 2 mentions · first at 3:02
  Mentioned in the context of investigations and public figures.
  Report comes out. Tom will give you guys a report. Trump told Palm Beach police chief, thank goodness you're stopping Epstein. Call Jelaine Maxwell evil in 2006. Phone call. FBI document.
• S.E.C. — Company · Key argument · 1 mention · first at 2:10:29
  Mentioned in the context of financial regulations and investigations.
  The question that you see, it's unclear whether the three defendants will be on the hook. $112 million they allegedly swindled from investors according to the SEC, but they may…
• Social Security Trust Fund — Company · Key argument · 2 mentions · first at 29:50
  Mentioned in discussions about U.S. debt and economic policies.
  When people talk about our debt, where is our debt? Only right now, right now today, posted 28% of our debt is on internationally. The rest is owned by us. The Social Security…
• S&P 500 — Company · 2 mentions · first at 32:58
  I think he's, again, I think it goes back to what's the value of the dollar, right? The Dow is priced in dollar terms. If we look at, for example, the Dow last year, use S&P…
• Goldman Sachs — Company · 2 mentions
• Mastercard — Company · 2 mentions
• Nova Nordisk — Company · 1 mention · first at 3:13
  SMP is already predicting China's property slump will be worse than it expected. This year, January layoffs rose to the highest level for the month since 2009. Nova Nordisk…
• Department of Labor — Company · 1 mention · first at 6:04
  Was they were expecting about 55,000 for the month. And they were expecting some revisions maybe to go back as far as 24, right? They were expecting like 18 months of…
• Radio Shack — Company · Business focus · 2 mentions · first at 2:08:58
  Mentioned in the context of alleged financial schemes and acquisitions.
  Weird story. I don't know what you guys are going to say about this. If you have an opinion, great. If you don't, great. Great. Ty Lopez, did you guys follow the story, what…
• Pier 1 Imports — Company · Business focus · 1 mention · first at 2:09:04
  Mentioned in the context of alleged financial schemes and acquisitions.
  Weird story. I don't know what you guys are going to say about this. If you have an opinion, great. If you don't, great. Great. Ty Lopez, did you guys follow the story, what…

Products & tech

• Bitcoin — Product · 21 mentions · first at 36:21
• Gold — Product · Core debated asset / inflation hedge · 2 mentions · first at 1:44
  A central investment focus: Schiff and Groman use gold’s rise (to ~$5,000) as evidence of dollar debasement and loss of confidence in U.S. policy; compared directly to Bitcoin and equities.
  Like gold a lot, okay? And not a little bit. They kind of love it a lot. And you're probably going to hear some I told you so's. it's going to be one of those moments where I…
• Wegovi — Product · 1 mention · first at 3:20
  SMP is already predicting China's property slump will be worse than it expected. This year, January layoffs rose to the highest level for the month since 2009. Nova Nordisk…

Concepts & topics

• Gold — Concept · Core topic · 1 mention · first at 8:32
  Discussed as a key investment during economic uncertainty, with predictions about its future value.
• inflation — Concept · Core topic · 15 mentions · first at 6:12
  Central to discussions about economic policy and the Federal Reserve's actions.
• reserve currency — Concept · Key argument · 5 mentions · first at 13:50
  Discussed in the context of the U.S. dollar's global role and potential shifts.
  Think the world is going to move away from bilateral trade in U.S. dollars. So we're not going to be able to finance these massive trade deficits, these massive budget…
• Nuclear energy — Concept · Key argument · 3 mentions · first at 4:00
  Discussed as a potential solution to energy needs and its resurgence in the market.
  That's on the verge of reopening a shuttered reactor in Michigan, has filed confidentially with SEC to go public. It could be one of the biggest IPOs in the nuclear industry in…
• Artificial Intelligence — Concept · Core topic · 3 mentions · first at 9:19
  Discussed as a transformative force in the economy and job market.
  Cycles over time, and I think there is a starting to be the dawning realization or maybe even fear that some of these job losses are starting to be related to the pace of AI…
• Debt-based currency — Concept · Key argument · 2 mentions · first at 9:57
  Discussed as a fundamental issue with the current economic system.
  Ripe for AI disruption than healthcare administration. The machines just do it better than people do. So now the reason why it's fundamentally incompatible is ultimately…
• Quantitative easing — Concept · Key argument · 1 mention · first at 15:53
  Mentioned in discussions about Federal Reserve policies and economic management.
  The Fed has cut interest rates, yet look what's happened to long-term rates. The Fed has completely lost control of the long-term bond market. That's why they surreptitiously…
• Stagflation — Concept · Key argument · 1 mention · first at 16:18
  Discussed in the context of economic challenges and policy responses.
  And we've reached that point where we have this massive stagflationary collapse. We have inflation that's running out of control. why do you think the Fed is allowing…
• K-shaped economy — Concept · Key argument · 1 mention · first at 28:19
  Discussed in the context of economic inequality and recovery patterns.
  We have the record wealth inequality. The only way to fix that at some point is for something to happen that narrows these. And we're heading on a path where what we're going…
• H-1B — Concept · Key argument · 4 mentions · first at 1:21:46
  Mentioned in discussions about immigration policies and the job market.
  Me what the flow of funds, what you were highlighting, which is, there's too much supply, there's not enough demand for those kids, for those jobs, ultimately. My point was…
• jock tax — Concept · Key argument · 3 mentions · first at 2:01:54
  Discussed in the context of taxation policies affecting athletes.
  At duty days and So each team spent seven days in the state of California. So those are seven duty days, and they pierce your regular salary at 3.5%. So he has to pay, when you…
• Financial repression — Concept · Key argument · 1 mention · first at 18:56
  Discussed in the context of economic policies and their impact on savers.
  Often tell you what the plan is. Even sometimes when he shouldn't, he does. And I agree that we are in a Western sovereign debt crisis, that we have a debt problem, we have a…
• Yield curve control — Concept · Key argument · 1 mention · first at 19:26
  Mentioned in discussions about monetary policy and economic strategies.
  110% to 55% in just five years. How did we do that? Simple. We grew rapidly. We had yield curve control, which is to say the Fed went to Treasury and said, we will buy every…

Places & events

• United States (states) — Place · 11 mentions · first at 9:57
• China — Place · Key argument · 2 mentions · first at 3:08
  Discussed in the context of economic competition and the shifting global economic landscape.
  SMP is already predicting China's property slump will be worse than it expected. This year, January layoffs rose to the highest level for the month since 2009. Nova Nordisk…
• El Paso — Place · Setting · 10 mentions · first at 0:39
  Discussed in the context of a mysterious airport shutdown and its implications.
  Okay, so we got a special podcast here for you guys today. We got a lot of stories to cover. It's supposed to be a business podcast. We do Wednesday to talk about business. And…
• Epstein Files — Event · Key argument · 7 mentions · first at 1:13
  Discussed in relation to recent leaks and the implications for public figures.
  Going on we don't know about? Did Mexico's airport across the street from El Paso shut down? It didn't. So is there something we know? Are they reporting any of this stuff?…
• Venezuela — Place · Key argument · 4 mentions · first at 52:46
  Mentioned in the context of global economic and political dynamics.
  Think about all the countries that we're messing with that are in that general area in south america like we're we're causing problems for cuba we're causing problems for…
• World War II — Event · Key argument · 3 mentions · first at 19:09
  Referenced in discussions about economic strategies and historical parallels.
  That we're gonna run a version of the playbook that we ran in World War II. So during World War II, we ran debt to GDP up to 110%. And from 1945 to 1951, debt to GDP fell from…
• Russia — Place · Key argument · 3 mentions · first at 45:13
  Mentioned in the context of global economic and military dynamics.
  Then in 2022, same kind of dynamic. The head of the UN came out in, or excuse me, of NATO, Mark Rudy, came out in 2025, early last year, said the Russians, with their small…
• COVID-19 pandemic — Event · 2 mentions
• Fort Bliss — Place · Setting · 5 mentions · first at 0:53
  Mentioned in relation to the El Paso airport shutdown and military presence.
  Shooting, right? And not El Paso shooting. The El Paso airport shutting down for the next till, what is it, February 20th. No flights in or out. First thing in the morning. No…
• Mexico — Place · Key argument · 4 mentions · first at 1:03
  Mentioned in the context of border security and economic discussions.
  Think is a crazy thing? that's going on here yeah well i mean it's the closest state of the board or closest major airport to the border i believe and think about all the…
• Super Bowl — Event · Key argument · 4 mentions · first at 2:01:42
  Mentioned in the context of taxation and economic policies affecting athletes.
  Not going to want to make you go play in the NFL and move and play in California because they tax the shit out of you. Go ahead and play this clip. For winning the Super Bowl…
• Cold War — Event · Key argument · 2 mentions · first at 1:52:28
  Referenced in discussions about historical economic strategies and their relevance today.
  Playing that card and setting up the petrodollar we were able to print dollars for oil and commodities which is easier than lifting it out of ground for than the soviets were…
• Nobel Prize — Event · 2 mentions
• Oscars — Event · 2 mentions
• 911 — Event · Key argument · 1 mention · first at 50:08
  Referenced in the context of the El Paso airport shutdown and security measures.
  Tom, I'm going to come to you first. The last time El Paso shut down their airport was 9-11 till 9-13. Two days. And that was when World Trade Center came down. How much bigger…
• World Economic Forum — Event · 1 mention · first at 1:43:40
  Work. See what they tell you. Not everything is money. There's a bunch of different things that you got to do. See what it looks like when it works on World Economic Forum.…
• California — Place · Key argument · 11 mentions · first at 2:21
  Discussed in relation to its economic policies and their impact on the wealthy.
  Claims he was right about everything. Trump picked, the Fed picks Warsh. He picked him, he says, because he can get the economy to grow 15% growth. California's billionaire…
• Puerto Rico — Place · Setting · 5 mentions · first at 1:24:15
  Mentioned in the context of personal anecdotes and economic discussions.
  To be? What is above safety and security? 12 to 15 million people came here last four years. Yeah, wait a minute. You don't live in America to know what that feels like. You…
• Connecticut — Place · Setting · 3 mentions · first at 1:24:23
  Mentioned in personal anecdotes and economic discussions.
  Think about running for president or was there a speculation or story or something like that? Not seriously, but I did run for U.S. Senate in 2010, but I didn't even win the…
• Canada — Place · Key argument · 3 mentions · first at 1:35:08
  Mentioned in the context of economic and political discussions.
  America so that China can trade with this continent without having to go through Long Beach or San Pedro. the United States is being pushed out, and they're going to be a lot…

Media & podcasts

• Fox News — Media · Referenced expert · 3 mentions · first at 22:31
  Mentioned in the context of media coverage and political commentary.
  Bessett on there. Well, I was on Fox and Friends not too long ago on a Saturday. And unfortunately, I'll probably never be on again because I went on and I told the truth about…

Full transcript with timestamps

0:04 Did you ever think you would make it? I feel I'm supposed to take sweet victory. I know this life meant for me. Adam, what's your point? The future looks bright. My handshake is better than anything I ever size, right here. You are a one of one? My son's right there. I don't think I've ever said this before.

0:30 Okay, so we got a special podcast here for you guys today. We got a lot of stories to cover. It's supposed to be a business podcast. We do Wednesday to talk about business. And then you get reports this morning about El Paso shooting, right? And not El Paso shooting. The El Paso airport shutting down for the next till, what is it, February 20th. No flights in or out. First thing in the morning. No one knows what's going on. Down the street from Fort Bliss, 90,000 soldiers. People want to know how did this take place. You know, is there something going on we don't know about? Did Mexico's airport across the street from El Paso shut down? It didn't. So is there something we know? Are they reporting any of this stuff? We're going to talk about that as well. We have to end on, of course, with some of the stuff that was released with Epstein Files, with the six names that was just leaked by Ro Khanna that they're now talking about and

1:22 a few other things that we'll get into. And we just got the jobs report that we just got an update on as well. here minutes ago. But let me go through the stories and then we'll have our guests introduce them. So we're going to talk about gold. The guys that we have here on the podcast kind of like gold a lot, okay? And not a little bit. They kind of love it a lot. And you're probably going to hear some I told you so's. You know, it's going to be one of those moments where I told you gold's going to be at 5,000. And then we're going to see if they're going to say gold's going to get to 50,000 one day. Who knows? Is it going to be, you know, crypto, You know, one of our guests today believes all roads lead to gold.

1:57 We'll debate it. We'll hash it out. I'm a guy that owns a lot of gold, so I'm a fan of gold as well, so who knows? Who knows what'll happen? Trump's predicting $100,000 on Dow. By the time he leaves office, claims he was right about everything. Trump picked, the Fed picks Warsh. He picked him, he says, because he can get the economy to grow 15% growth. California's billionaire tax. will be disastrous and cause wealthy to flee. Give me one second. Hang on one second. Wealthy to flee, economists predict. January layoffs rose to the highest level for the month since 2009. All morning this morning that we're saying that there's going to be a negative news report for jobs, and it's going to be bad, and it's going to be terrible, and then boom, report comes out. Tom will give you guys a report. Trump told Palm Beach police chief, thank goodness you're stopping Epstein. Call Jelaine Maxwell evil

3:02 in 2006. Phone call. FBI document. SMP is already predicting China's property slump will be worse than it expected. This year, January layoffs rose to the highest level for the month since 2009. Nova Nordisk sues him and hers. This is a story Tom's not happy about. Copycat versions of Wegovi drug, him stock fell 18%. I mean, the stock fell. You know what I'm saying? The stock fell 18%. For some of you guys at award, apparently it still works. Job hunters. This is the weirdest story. I don't know if you guys have seen the story or not. Job hunters are so desperate that they're paying to get recruited. Not like you're looking for a job, you're paying the recruiter saying, Please tell them I'm the person. I'll give you a site. Get me the job. Tell them they should hire me instead of the other person. Times are changing.

4:00 Nuclear sector is poised to be its biggest IPO in years. It's going to be nuclear. We'll talk about that. Treasury Secretary predicts Blockbuster 2026 for U.S. economy as Dow hits historic milestone. Proposed ban on investors in the housing market hits a wall in Congress. Housing affordability package set to advance in Congress amid home cost concerns. Zuckerberg is the latest California billionaire to buy Florida home. It's happening left and right. CIA looks to speed up access to new tech in race against China. And then we got a couple other stories here. Social networks face big tobacco moments over addiction cases. And EU warns TikTok over addictive feeds and risks to children. Okay. With that being said, let's get right into it. Our guests today, Peter Schiff and Luke Gorman. Luke, if you don't mind, we've had Peter a couple times before. Take a minute and introduce yourself to the audience, please. Thank

4:54 you, Patrick. Luke Groman, my founded FFTT, an investment research firm 12 years ago, spent 30 years in investment research doing bottoms-up fundamental channel checks first. And FFTT over the last 12 years is focused on doing aggregating publicly available data points to identify developing economic bottlenecks in macro and thematic markets. Beautiful. There you go. So the guy knows what he's talking about when it comes to money. And there's two types of people here. The super, super technical, and then we have someone that's going to be able to simplify it for you as well. Hank Todd, we're going to get smarter by the end of the podcast. Tom, tell us about the jobs report that just came in. Well, the jobs report just broke. 8.30 popped out, and the headlines were two sets of headlines. One was that 130,000, a little bit more than 130,000 jobs were created in January. Multiple reports over the last 48 hours coming out of the weekend

5:54 was they were expecting about 55,000 for the month. And they were expecting some revisions maybe to go back as far as 24, right? They were expecting like 18 months of revisions. You know, the Department of Labor, a little bit politicized, more than a little bit. they tend to go back and revise. What this has done to the market today, though, is that in addition to this, they announced that inflation was a tick lower, 4.3 versus 4.4, which is good that it didn't move. And the Dow was up 200 in pre-market. Yeah, we're 50,543 here, 270 pre-market. NASDAQ 218 pre-market, S&P 41 pre-market. So, you know, That's what you got. And the market seems pretty happy that it wasn't bad news. What does this mean, Peter? What does this mean to the average guy? It doesn't mean anything. I mean, you've got to take these government jobs numbers with a grain of salt. They are highly politicized, and they are almost always revised down, not just once, but multiple times. The revisions that

6:59 we just got, which was for about a year's worth of data, this is not the first downward revision. Maybe it's like the third or the fourth. But if you go back to all these jobs reports that came out, let's say during the last year of Biden's term, almost every report was initially a beat. We created more jobs than we expected. They've now revised them so many times that they're all misses. But many of the reports which said we created jobs, we now know that we actually lost jobs. They would have been reported as negative numbers had they been reported accurately the first time. But the markets react to these numbers as if they're real. The government takes credit. The Fed was taking credit for this strong labor market, the Biden administration, Wall Street. If you go back to my podcasts, every single jobs beat that came out, I said, it's not a beat.

7:57 Just wait for the revisions. They're all going to be misses. I think we're losing jobs. I think the economy is a lot weaker. than the government claims, and that was the case. And that is the case today. The Trump administration is telling the same type of lies that the Biden administration did. The economy is far weaker than is being claimed. In fact, we're probably in a protracted recession that's been going on for years. And also inflation is a lot higher than they claim. So the economy is weaker, inflation is stronger, and that's what is being confirmed by the markets. Look at gold over $5,000. Look at this dollar hitting a new all-time record low against the Swiss franc. You can see what's happening in the market. Look at rising long-term bond yields as the world is losing confidence in the U.S. dollar and our ability to manage our debt. And our debt is exploding. I mean, if we really had a strong economy, budget deficits would not be going up. They'd be

8:56 coming down. Luke, what would you say? I would tend to agree with a lot of that. And I think a key question is that how much of it is cyclical versus how much of it is secular. In other words, the economy goes through cycles over time, and I think there is a starting to be the dawning realization or maybe even fear that some of these job losses are starting to be related to the pace of AI and technology and robotics. And if that's the case, that's problematic because that is much more structural in nature and would require a much more structural reaction or aggressive response from policymakers to offset. And so that's something I've been very focused on literally in the last month, month and a half, two months of just AI is fundamentally incompatible with the system as it's structured. incompatible with the system that's structured. Tell me more. Well, the United States has a debt-based currency, a debt-based

10:03 system, and about half of our tax receipts come from individual taxpayers. And the working model, I've been talking about this for going on three years now, has been, you know, one of the advantages of being in Cleveland, Ohio, where we're located, is we live through AI productivity shock 1.0. It was called the China shock. The economists called it the China shock. And that was productivity miracle, significantly reduced costs, significantly reduced regulation because they sent factories to China. They sent the jobs to China for blue-collar workers. China went into the WTO at the end of 2001, and in the next seven to eight years, manufacturing employment in the United States fell 30% to 35%. And so... That's been my working model for what AI and robotics are likely to do to white collar workers. And having been, having seen what happened to blue collar workers when AI productivity miracle, you know, China hit, you can extrapolate without having to be too

11:08 aggressive with the assumptions. For example, 1990, the biggest employer across the United States was manufacturing. Today, in 2025, according to the New York Times, in 38 of 50 states, the single biggest employer is healthcare. Within that, it's not practitioners, it is mostly administration. There are few industries that are more ripe for AI disruption than healthcare administration. The machines just do it better than people do. So now the reason why it's fundamentally incompatible is ultimately because we have a debt-based system, because people borrow to buy their cars, they borrow to buy their houses, they borrow on their credit cards.

11:52 What happens when? Because it's starting to look like it's when, and it might already be starting. People making $100,000, $150,000, $200,000 in good white-collar jobs, they have never had to worry about being displaced by a cheap Chinese laborer on the other side of the world. The machine is now the cheap Chinese laborer. And so when they lose their jobs, when their wages are compressed, how do they pay their mortgage? How do they pay their car? How do they pay their credit card? And we know what happens from there because we saw in 2007, 2008, when they stopped paying their mortgage. That's why it's fundamentally independent. So you guys are on the same page with what you think is about to happen to the economy. You guys both think there's going to be a market correction. There's some huge problems that underlie the economy, but productivity gains from AI are not one of them. Remember, to the extent that

12:38 we're able to eliminate labor because of AI, that's a positive. That's a good thing. That's how the economy grows. That's how our standard of living rises. We find more productive ways to produce more stuff. The problem is going to be if the people who are displaced from AI can't find productive employment someplace else, which would normally happen Absent all of the government interference in the economy and the ways the government has been undermining our economy for years, particularly with artificially low interest rates, which unfortunately are going to get even lower, the United States economy is unfortunately a consumer credit-based economy. And the lending comes from abroad. We have an economy that is completely dysfunctional. because of decades of bad monetary and fiscal policy, the United States is completely dependent on the rest of the world to produce the goods that we don't make and loan us the money that we don't save.

13:37 And I think what's happening right now is the world is pulling the rug out from under that phony economy. I think Donald Trump has basically given the world a kick in the ass to get them to do what they should have done a long time ago, and that is ditch the dollar, move away from the dollar as the reserve currency. Central banks are getting rid of dollars and buying gold. And I think the world is going to move away from bilateral trade in U.S. dollars. So we're not going to be able to finance these massive trade deficits, these massive budget deficits. And that is the problem. We're headed not for a financial crisis like we had in 2008, but a sovereign debt and U.S. dollar crisis, which is considerably worse. worse for the U.S. and will be much more disruptive for the standard of living of typical Americans. Tom, what do you think? Well, Peter, you've been talking about this for a lot of years in various ways, to be fair,

14:32 and I'm not picking on you here. What makes first quarter 26 different? Because you've had these warnings going on for a while. Now, I agree with you about the robots. And government has pointed out because they've recommended like a robot tax. For each job that you replace, Pat, we're going to put a tax on the robot as a taxpaying unit because it's a unit of productivity. Now, that's insanity. And the EU actually voted that down a couple of years ago, which was kind of shocking by their standards. But what's different here in 26 versus last year versus 24 versus 20? You've given the call several times. Well, we're just further along in the process. I mean, if you look at the last couple of years, gold broke out.

15:13 It was at $2,000 an ounce at the beginning of 2024. It's over $5,000 now. That is a considerable move in the price of gold. That is a major warning that what I've been warning about myself is now happening. The market is confirming. what I've been saying. Look, I saw this train wreck coming way in advance. Potentially had policymakers paid attention to what I was saying, we might have been able to diffuse the bomb. But now it's obviously going off. You could see it in the foreign exchange market. You could see it in the long-term treasury yields. Look how many times the Fed has cut interest rates, yet look what's happened to long-term rates. The Fed has completely lost control of the long-term bond market. That's why they surreptitiously went back to quantitative easing They haven't acknowledged or admitted that it's QE, but that's exactly what they're doing. They're expanding the money supply right now. They're monetizing more debt because private

16:08 demand for U.S. debt is evaporating. Foreign governments don't want to buy our debt. Private investors don't want to buy our debt. And so rates are going to rise. And we've reached that point where we have this massive stagflationary collapse. We have inflation that's running out of control. I mean, why do you think the Fed is allowing inflation? It's well above target. If their target is 2%, we're well above 3%. Yet instead of raising rates, which they should be doing, they're cutting rates. They're doing that because they have no control. So let me do that. Let me go to the story here. Okay, Rob, if you want to pull this up. Trump says Fed pick Warsh can get economy to a 15% growth, which, by the way, I know you guys, this sounds like a good story, but there's... uh... many arguments to drop going to play this clip i'm coming to come to you for everybody else for years three percent growth of this is great gdp three percent gdp tour and

17:03 after very happy to have two percent one for the happy with anything we should go fifteen or twenty percent every time we're growing they stop it by announcing that you know we raise interest yes is that so we did what they do five point four percent was announced right with a democratic shutdown which causes at least a point and a half okay people are as we could have been seven percent we should be at fifteen percent if i'll tell you if our new head of the federal i think is going to be great and he's is a really high quality person he was a very and your friend kevin was great but i want to keep him with us to i said to kill a couple of kids added to kevin's right but i wanted to keep them with us he's doing great if he does the job that he's capable we can grow at fifteen percent with i think more than that but if you think numbers are but larry not i the problem is everything we used to grow at fifteen percent and

18:06 twelve you know what we were starting as a country will go against because we had spirit and we had the right incentives today we have A lot of socialism, a lot of communism, we have a lot of bad things. But there's no... You can pause it right there. So, Luke, what concerns you about this and what excites you about it? I think the 15% number on an absolute number is probably a little bit of Trump being Trump, which is to say, you know, everything is superlatives. However... I think he's getting at what the game plan is.

18:39 I think one of the great charms, in my opinion, of Trump is he will often tell you what the plan is. Even sometimes when he shouldn't, he does. And I agree that we are in a Western sovereign debt crisis, that we have a debt problem, we have a deficit problem. There's two ways out of it. You either default on the debt, which is simply not possible, or you financially repress the debt. You devalue the currency. And so what I think is... Trump is telling us is that we're gonna run a version of the playbook that we ran in World War II. So during World War II, we ran debt to GDP up to 110%. And from 1945 to 1951, debt to GDP fell from 110% to 55% in just five years. How did we do that? Simple. We grew rapidly. We had yield curve control, which is to say the Fed went to Treasury and said, we will buy every three-month T-bill you offer at 3-8 of a percent, no questions asked. We will buy every 10-year Treasury you offer at

19:41 2.5 percent, no questions asked. They kept those yields there, and they printed as much money as they needed to. And U.S. inflation took off, and U.S. real rates, which is to say nominal GDP growth minus inflation, real rates were negative 13 percent at the lows. So basically we inflated the debt away and ultimately we grew nominally probably at 15 or 20 or 25%. And fast forward to 2020 in COVID, we ran a very similar version of that playbook. If you look at the U.S. debt to GDP, it peaked at about 130% around mid-2020. It fell down to about 115% in under a year. How did we do that? Simple. We grew GDP at about 12 to 15% nominally with about 8 to 10% inflation in that number. And the Fed was buying hundreds of billions of dollars of bonds at basically zero. And so when he talks about Warsh and he talks about 15%, I think they understand they are in a corner. The only way out of this is of another version of that where they are going to run this

20:54 economy extremely hot And you're going to have high growth. Is that a good thing for the average person? First of all – Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. Is this going to be beneficial to the average person? Who does this benefit? So there's winners and losers in any choice, of course, right? So the winner over the last 50 years of financialization have been bondholders, Wall Street, Washington deficits. The loser has been the middle and working class of America, the wage earner. To my eyes, what the Trump administration appears to be doing is trying to reverse that. Listen to what Scott Besson has said repeatedly. It's the time for Main Street, not Wall Street. Wall Street will still do okay, but Main Street will do well.

21:30 Look at immigration policy. They are intentionally, regardless of how one feels about it politically, the fact is they are removing supplies of blue-collar labor from this country that has kept a cap on wages. And now they bring in a Fed chair that he says is going to grow GDP 15%. ultimately what i think they're trying to do is flip the script versus the last fifty years which is wagers are gonna rise uh... they're gonna try to run the henry ford model which is to say henry ford famously said i pay my workers more than i need to because i want them to be able to afford to buy the model t's coming off the line because that is a sustainable that's a sustainable economic model at which hold on let me finish peter the uh... Trade Representative Jamison Greer at Davos in a speech that's fascinating. He gave a speech at Davos. All the speeches that came out at Davos three weeks ago got a lot of press time. His was not picked

22:27 up by Financial Times. It was not picked up by the Wall Street Journal. It was not picked up by Bloomberg. The only one that picked it up was Fox News in just a blurb. He came out and said exactly this. We are going back to a system where we are going to benefit – the working class, basically a more sustainable system. So the winners are going to be wages, the losers are going to be the bondholders on a real basis they're going to get paid every dollar their own but we're going to go we're going to have a period of the economy is going to grow hot. Peter, do you agree?

22:57 Yeah, okay, no, I don't agree with pretty much just about any of this stuff so let's get back to reality but just first to make a side point because I don't like hearing the nonsense about Henry Ford so the reason that Ford paid workers five dollars a day was not so they could buy his cars that that would be nonsense the reason he did that was to retain workers there was a lot of turnover and Ford invested a lot to train his workers on the assembly line. So in order to retain workers and reduce turnover, he paid higher wages, which and Ford workers back then in real terms were making a lot more than they're making today. And of course, back then they paid no income taxes, they paid no social security taxes. So it was good to be a worker in America before the government screwed up our economy. But I want to get to this idea that we're just somehow going to replay what happened after the Second World War. So first of

23:47 all, We ran up a lot of debt during the Second World War. Now, one thing that happened during the Second World War was we introduced the withholding tax and we pretty much tripled the income tax. So vast majority of Americans paid no income taxes at all prior to the Second World War. They started paying during the war to pay for the war. Now, when the war ended and we demobilized all the troops and we stopped the fighting, the government never got rid of the income tax. They never reversed the the tax hikes that were implemented to pay for the war.

24:21 So the government had all of this revenue coming in that it didn't have before from taxpayers. And that also helped to bring down the debt relative to GDP. And yes, we did create a lot of inflation during the 1960s that manifests itself in the 1970s that also helped to bring it down. Back then, America was a completely different country than we are today. We were the world's biggest creditor nation. We were the world's biggest exporter of manufactured goods. We had huge trade surpluses. We were still a sovereign nation. Today, we're completely broke. We're the world's biggest debtor nation. We have massive trade deficits. We have no savings. We're not increasing taxes the way we hiked them during the Second World War. We've recently cut taxes. Meanwhile, we've already bled the typical American household dry. They have all this debt. They didn't have, people didn't have credit card debt in the 1950s. They didn't have all these

25:18 student loans. Student loans didn't even exist back then. So Americans are drowning in debt. They have no ability to pay higher taxes to reduce these deficits. I agree with one thing that you said. We're going to try to inflate them away. But the biggest losers in this inflation are not just going to be bondholders, but wage earners. The average American is going to see the value of his savings and his wages completely eviscerated by the inflation that's about to hit. And what's going to happen, too, is decades of the inflation that we exported, because we took a lot of the money that we printed and we sent it abroad and our creditors. instead of buying our products, which didn't exist, they bought our financial assets. And that whole thing is going to be reversing. So the world is going to be selling U.S.

26:09 bonds, U.S. stocks, raising U.S. dollars. All those dollars are going to come home bidding up non-existent good prices. So all the inflation is going to move out of financial assets. So yes, Wall Street is going to lose, but all the inflation is going to move into consumer goods. So Main Street is going to lose too. Everybody in America is going to lose. The only winners will be the people who got out of Dodge. So Americans who read the writing on the wall and who divested of U.S. financial assets, got into foreign stocks, got into foreign bonds, got into precious metals and other inflation hedges, yes, they'll win. They'll win as investors. They'll lose as Americans, but they'll make a lot of money off of the collapse of this bubble economy that has been inflating for decades, and I've been warning about it, decades because I understood the fundamental problems. These are the problems that led me to

27:06 accurately forecast the 2008 financial crisis because I understood all the mistakes that the Fed made to make that crisis inevitable, but I also understood the even bigger mistakes that they've made since the 2008 financial crisis and including the mistakes that Walsh is going to make once he takes over from Powell. All right. If they inflate away the You said they don't have savings, but then you said they're going to get their savings inflated away. Those who do have savings. There are some Americans, baby boomers, that still have savings. Yes, there are others that only have debt. And sure, their debt is going to get inflated away. But whenever somebody's debt gets inflated away, that's somebody else's asset. Somebody is depending on that debt as their asset. So we're going to wipe out a lot of the financial assets of Americans. But when we wipe out a lot of the debt, sure. Which Americans, though? The Americans that own the bonds

27:57 are going to get wiped out. People that own the mortgages. Which Americans are those? Well, maybe the... Roughly what percent of income strata do they own most of the bonds? Yes, higher income. But also, you know, there are lower income Americans that have insurance, that have... People have life insurance policies that have cash value that are going to get wiped out. Peter, let me hear what you asked the station. I want to hear your thoughts on why you're asking that question. The reason I ask that is because one of the big problems everyone identifies, we have a K-shaped economy, right?

28:23 We have the record wealth inequality. The only way to fix that at some point is for something to happen that narrows these. And we're heading on a path where what we're going to do is— Rich get richer, poor get poorer. I agree. We can keep this going, in which case the currency will ultimately get destroyed, or we can implement some policies that allow wages to rise in this country, let profit dollars rise, but profit margins shrink. I agree. I agree. If this guy's in debt to this guy, which Peter's right, that's how it is— and this guy's debt gets inflated away and which means this guy's asset gets inflated away that's how you start closing the K a little bit. Yes, the wealth gap is going to close the rich are going to get poor and the poor are going to get poor too but the rich are going to get poorer faster than the poor so if you if you think that's a good thing that we're going to narrow the wealth gap by everybody getting poor well you know but I

29:17 would rather do it another way right but but unfortunately That is not the way this is going to happen. And the biggest problem for the average American is going to be the complete unaffordability of just about everything that we now take for granted. Because all these products that are affordable are going to be too expensive for most Americans to buy. So one of the things I think we have to remember is when people talk about our debt, you know, where is our debt? Only right now, right now today, posted 28% of our debt is on internationally. The rest is owned by us. The Social Security Trust Fund, the Fed owns what, 18 to 21 percent of the total debt today. So it's money we owe ourselves, which has devalued our dollar. So when we think about the debt, it's not like there's this big boogeyman internationally that we have to all pay. What is happening is it's going to affect the value of the dollar that we carry. And that's what people need to understand.

30:14 The average person is the reason that your house cost twice as much and your parents are happy because they call it equity. You call it unaffordability because you're 25 years old with a college degree and you're trying to start. Well, that was happened because we printed more dollars. And if there's more of something, it's less valuable. If there's one Michael Jordan rookie card, it's $5 million. If there's 1,000 Michael Jordan rookie cards, they're $5,000. That's the way the average person should be thinking about our money, right, is how much of it's out there. And the total debt we have, we owe – almost 80% of it to ourselves, which is affecting the value of our dollar and the affordability. And what these men are talking about in technical terms from two different perspectives is how that's going to shake out to remedy. And the remedy is, as they say, chemotherapy almost killed me. Well,

31:06 guess what? That's kind of what's going to happen with the economy. Yeah, but owing it to ourselves, you know, doesn't mean it's not a problem because, you know. No, it is because it affects the value of that dollar and what we can do with it. Well, the dollar is going to go down in value regardless. Right. But the fact that we owe the majority of our debt, some Americans owe it to other Americans, doesn't make that any less of a problem. Like Social Security Trust Fund. Look, the Social Security Trust Funds are basically worthless because all they have is U.S.

31:31 government bonds, and the U.S. government owes that money to itself. I'm going to get to the next story. I'm going to get to the next story. Okay, Rob, pull up the video with Trump saying Dow's going to get to $100,000, predicting it's going to get to $100,000. I think you have that clip. And then let's go to the Scott Besson, and then we'll go to Luke. Go for it. You probably saw today the stock market. The Dow just hit 50,000 three years ahead of schedule. They said probably couldn't be done in the four-year period. We did it in one year. So we're three years ahead of schedule. Broken all-time record.

32:07 50,000, which they say couldn't happen. On the crime front, it was just announced that murders are down and crime is down. It's got the lowest point in 125 years, the year 1900. And that's a big, big number. Did he say it's going to get to 100,000? So that was him bragging about the 50,000. But here is his tweet where he mentions that it's going to hit to 100,000. Record stock market and national security driven by our great tariffs. I am predicting 100,000 on the Dow by the end of my term. Remember, Trump was right about everything. I hope the U.S. Supreme Court is watching. Luke. Well, I think he's, again, I think it goes back to what's the value of the dollar, right? The Dow is priced in dollar terms. If we look at, for example, the Dow last year, use S&P 500 because I'm familiar with it. But if you look at the S&P 500 last year in dollar terms, I think it was up 17% or 18%, 19%. Gold in dollar terms was up 60%. So

33:11 in gold terms, the S&P fell. The S&P in gold terms has been down one year, two years, five years, 10 years, 20 years, 25 years, and a total return basis. So if you invested in the S&P 25 years ago with dividends reinvested, the so-called pet rock has beaten the S&P over the last 25 years. And so it's a question of ultimately when you're inflating away the debt, you're inflating away dollar debt, Equities are going to do well. And here I think it's ultimately, again, another sort of signal from Trump. Hey, here's what's going to happen, folks. I think he does care about the country. And I think if he gets – if one way you mitigate some of the societal fallout of doing this that I think Peter rightfully highlights is if enough – if you get more people to buy stocks at $50,000, you inflate the debt away – then people are going to be able to hedge slash make some money on that as they're doing it. That's the plan. First of

34:11 all, Trump— Let me go to Brandon, and then I'll come to you. Go ahead, Brandon. Yeah, thanks. I mean, I don't know whether Trump's trying to just devaluate the currency or inflate away the debt, but I don't see a scenario in which growing the economy 15% or taking the Dow to $100,000 is going to be good for the average person because it's going to— You don't think it is? No, I don't see how you could expect that to be good. Everything's going to be more expensive if that happens. And it's a similar thing to COVID. So the average person doesn't own a lot of stocks. I think 90% of stocks are owned by, what, 10% of the population. And same thing with real estate, cars, food, basic things. The basic things that everybody needs is going to get more expensive like it is right now.

34:48 That's why I laugh every time they say that inflation is down because the things that everybody needs isn't down. It's like, what, I don't know, just probably goods and services are down a little bit, maybe oil, oil. a few things here and there. They changed the basket around a lot. So I don't think that inflation is actually down. I think it's like you can't have that amount of growth without that amount of inflation. Well, he said a couple of things. I want you to process this, okay? You have two different types of presidents. They asked him the question, you know, what are you doing about home affordability? One end, hey, these big BlackRock companies, we're putting a stop to you going and buying all this stuff. He says, but I want property value to go up. I don't want it to go down. I want it to go up. I don't want it to go down to make it affordable for you. I want it to go up. Okay. Two, Dow. I want Dow to

35:33 go to $100,000. He's thinking like a boomer. Yeah, I get it. But who does that hurt? Who does it not hurt? To me, if you're not in equities, you're going to be destroyed if you're not in equities. And everybody who wants to find a way to time the market, I remember one time we had Peter on, and Peter said if I had my money in MAC 7, I would have had a lot more money than I do today. I think this was four or five years ago when we had a conversation together. When he said something like that. What was that? I don't remember when it was I said I would have more money in MAG-7. But now it's hard to say. I may have more money now because I was in gold stocks. It's kind of a tough call. I don't know about MAG-7.

36:09 I think MAG-7 destroyed gold. So let me get to this. Let me comment on this. I will come to you. I will come to you. Peter, you got to let me run the show. And everyone's got to speak. There's five names here. And I'll come to you. I'll control it. I'm the point guard. I'll come to you to score. Please respect that. Okay. So two things, Bitcoin versus gold, high, low. The last five years, Bitcoin's low has been 15,497. Bitcoin's high, 126,230, October of 2025. Today, Bitcoin 68,000 and some change. Gold, five years, low 16,18. High, 56 unchanged, 56,26, whatever it hit. Today, 50,99, it could have changed, 50,86 today. I'm gonna come to you with this, because this is a victory for you, because you've been talking about gold for quite some time. What is your prediction for gold versus Bitcoin the next few years? Well, first of all, I want to talk gold Dow before I go gold Bitcoin, because when Trump comes out and he says

37:09 that the Dow's 50,000, first of all, he's claiming credit for it, as if he's the reason it's there. And remember, we kept making record highs in the Dow when Biden was president, and Trump said, well, that was the worst economy ever, but we still had record highs in the Dow. And he talks about his great tariffs, The Dow's at $50,000 despite his lousy tariffs, not because of them. His tariffs are not helping the economy. They're harming the economy. But the $50,000 Dow, when gold's at $5,000, the Dow is 10 ounces of gold. It was over 40 ounces of gold 25 years ago. So this is a major bear market, a 75% decline in the real value of U.S. stocks. That is going to continue, even if Trump is right. that the Dow hits 100,000, which I doubt by the end of his term, what if gold is 20,000? Now the Dow is only worth five ounces of gold. Even the people who own stocks are going to be worse off if the Dow goes up like that because stocks are not going to go up

38:07 as much as inflation. But this is another reason the government likes inflation is because it makes the numbers bigger. And so it creates the illusion that you're getting richer even as you're getting poorer. Now, talking about illusions, when you talk about Bitcoin, look, Bitcoin has been a bubble for a long time. I think it was running out of air. Then they got Wall Street involved. And Wall Street got into Bitcoin in a big way, not because they believed in it, but because they believed other people were dumb enough to believe in it. And they wanted to make money off it.

38:36 They wanted to book the action. They wanted crypto gamblers at their casino. So Wall Street got involved to generate fees. They got all these ETFs. They started doing banking deals. Then I think the market started to implode until we got Trump. The crypto industry used a lot of their gains to bribe Trump. They gave a lot of money to his campaign. A lot of people voted for him because they hoped he would make their Bitcoin more valuable. It became like a special interest group. So politics got involved, and I think that's the main reason that Bitcoin shot up to $126,000 was the high price. The air is coming out of the bubble now.

39:17 It's down about 50%. I think the entire narrative that Bitcoin is digital gold, which I never believed, fell apart last year. When gold had its best year since 1979, Bitcoin went down. Gold is having another great year so far in 2026. Bitcoin is having a horrible year. It's going, you know, micro strategy or strategy is having an even worse year. But I think we're headed substantially lower in Bitcoin now. I think a lot of the money that came into these ETFs is going to bail. I think a lot of that money, unfortunately, came out of gold ETFs, came out of gold stock ETFs. The investing public was selling their gold and their gold mining stocks when they should have been buying more. And they were taking the money and overpaying for basically nothing. And so they loaded up on Bitcoin.

40:08 And I think all that money is going to come out. I think all these ridiculous Bitcoin treasury companies like Strategy, are now loaded up with Bitcoin. They need to get rid of it. All I see is a decline. The media is trying to hype it up, trying to create the impression that this is some kind of buying opportunity, that you're getting Bitcoin on sale, but you're still overpaying for it. It has very little value. Luke, do you agree? In the short run, I think Bitcoin has a lot more downside. It is to me has I've been calling it the last functioning smoke alarm of liquidity. I think it is a very interesting technology in the long run. It is a essentially energy tied neutral reserve asset. The rest of crypto I pay no attention to.

40:59 Bitcoin for me is the only thing I watch in the crypto in the crypto world. It may have some challenges down the road at some point in terms of certain technology, but technology changeovers, you know, if quantum ever someday is an issue. I don't think it's an issue now. I don't think it's going to be for a number of years, but it could be someday. But that's I don't think that's why it's selling off. I think as the last functioning smoke alarm of liquidity, I think the move from one hundred twenty five thousand to sixty seven thousand wherever we are today, I It's the first indicator of a softening economy, of a risk-off environment. And I think that is a message that should be heeded. Tom?

41:41 So I have a little bit different view. I've never subscribed to Charlie Munger's original statement. He says, I think Bitcoin is poison. As a matter of fact, I think it's rat poison. I see the value of it. Is it proving to be the inflation hedge that they said it was? Well, let's wait and see. This is certainly a bump. 45% or 47% in the past 22 days. I mean, that's a pop. And now we're going to see, you know, will the real Bitcoin please stand up? But I'm not a traditionalist that discounts it. I think it's going. Is it going to a million? I don't have that as my guidance, at least not tomorrow. But I think that Bitcoin is stronger than people give it credit for. And I am because there's one element about Bitcoin, and maybe I'm crazy and maybe you can tell me that I'm nuts or miss something. There is a limited supply. And whenever you have a limited supply, then you're not going to have the situation like the Fed. The Fed keeps printing money, Pat. And so I

42:43 tend to be, am I a bull? I'm not a raw raging bull. But I think long-term Bitcoin is going to be fine. But I don't know if I'm with the million-dollar and five-year crowd. Yeah, well, I think the limited supply is ultimately meaningless when there's no more demand. I mean, the only demand for Bitcoin comes from speculators who think they're going to get rich. And the way people get rich on Bitcoin is they sell it to somebody else who also believes that they can get rich selling it to another person at an even higher price. But there's no fundamental value proposition for Bitcoin. It doesn't do anything. I disagree with that, actually. I disagree, because actually, if you look at some of the worst regimes in the world, You know, the Taliban, they crack down. They don't allow women to be educated. When we left Taliban, moved back in. The Taliban couldn't stop Bitcoin. We had people here sending Bitcoin

43:33 to continue to educate women, and the Taliban couldn't stop it. Right, but why don't they just buy a stable coin that's just as liquid, just as easy, or tokenized gold? I mean, there are tokens that are backed by real gold that are just, in fact, easier to transfer. You can do it quicker and cheaper than Bitcoin. So if you want— You're still centralized with those. You're still like the Bitcoin, you can move— So what? Who cares if it's centralized? It's a store of value that you can use. Well, because the Taliban can go get the gold. The Taliban can put – there's ways you can do it. So let's take Tether Gold. Tether Gold has all their gold stored in Switzerland. The Taliban can't go to Switzerland and get any of that gold. So if you own Tether Gold, you own something that's just as safe as Bitcoin, except you actually own gold. You own something of real value.

44:20 You don't have just a string of numbers that means absolutely nothing. I mean there are 2.1 quadrillion Satoshis. There are a lot of Satoshis, and no matter how many you have, you can't do a thing with them. Whereas gold is a very valuable mineral that is being held by central bankers reserves, but it's used in industry, it's something real. So if I had the choice between holding onto tokenized gold versus tokenized nothing, I'm gonna take tokenized gold. The reason that people want Bitcoin is to get rich, not to use it as a medium of exchange or as a currency. Because if you wanna use a currency or a medium of exchange, there are plenty of other tokens that are much better. The only demand for Bitcoin is because people think it's going to a million. They think it's going to 10 million because that's what they're being told. I agree. That's why they hold it. I just say there's the use case of not really. Because look, I mean, you can have the gold in

45:10 Switzerland and I agree. And I own gold. I like gold a lot. I'm a big gold bull. And the American government came in and took Russia's FX reserves. The American government came in and took American gold. Anytime you have something centralized or control of the economy, control of the banking pipelines that we do, there's a risk there. I'm not saying it's a high risk. I don't live my life worried about the... But Bitcoin has the ability where you can... Literally, with 24 or 12 passwords, I could go to Fort Lauderdale Airport. I could get on a plane. I could fly anywhere in the world. I could get a job as a janitor for a couple months. I could buy an iPhone. I could download the app, and I could download my entire net worth. to my phone, that's value. There are a lot of other tokens. There are no other ways you could. No, there are a lot of other tokens. You're talking about the blockchain and the media and the alternative system. The whole alternative problem. No, but there

46:06 are thousands of other tokens that you could do the exact same thing with. In theory, but yeah. No, not in theory. Why? Who says it's the best? Because the proof of work algorithm. Well, who cares about proof of work? First of all, there are other tokens that are proof of work, but proof of work doesn't mean anything if the work doesn't produce anything. Look, I can spend half my day digging holes in the ground, and I can spend the other half of the day filling them back up again, and at the end of the day, I can prove that I worked all day, but my efforts were... resulted in absolutely nothing. When you work to create a Bitcoin, you've wasted that energy. You talk about Bitcoin being energy, All of the energy used to create Bitcoin is a complete waste. Bitcoin is not a battery.

46:48 It depends. If you attach – well, the U.S. needs to build out its electrical grid. Ted Cruz talked about this a couple years ago. He's been one of the few congresspeople that did it. We don't need Bitcoin for that. Bitcoin takes away our electricity. No, but the challenge in building an electrical grid is that you can't just say, hey, I want to build a data center in Miami. I'm going to put up a data center. Go. Go. You have to have the grid, electrical grid, it has to be balanced out. It's a very intricate engineering problem. And one of the ways you can build flex capacity, if you're trying to grow your grid really rapidly to try to catch up to the Chinese, who have built an entire American grid in four years, by the way. One way you can build for bigger grid than you presently need to build capacity is you start sticking Bitcoin miners on the back of it. That's a bunch of nonsense. Because then you can take the Bitcoin miner

47:37 down when you need to. Texas does this as a city. No, but to say that we should waste energy so that we can have it. But it's not wasting. It's not wasting. How is it not wasted when you're just creating nothing? Because the laws of thermodynamics say energy can be neither created nor destroyed. It can only change its form. You're not wasting any energy. No, yes, you are. The energy is gone. We've used it up. No. No, you haven't. Yes, we have. You can't reuse the energy that we used to create the Bitcoin. It's gone. So you're saying Newton's laws of thermodynamics. No, this has got nothing to do with Newton's laws of thermodynamics. Okay, so if I drive my car and the gas is gone, what am I going to do? What happened to that gas? It's gone, right? I can't reuse it. It's been converted into heat. All right, but it's gone. I can't use it anymore. I can't use it in that form. But I know whatever energy was used to mine

48:24 Bitcoin, gone we can't use it to you know light up our homes or to power anything we've already consumed it whatever whatever was utilized what you're saying is the nonsense that the crypto community tries to put out there to try to justify this complete waste of energy okay let's go to the next story rob do me a favor el paso what do we know so far about what happened with the airport at el paso one we know they this morning if you want to play that one clip announcing that they're shutting down the airport. It was in the group chat that we sent, Rob. If you want to just go to it, you have it.

49:00 It was a video that we sent this morning. Out of nowhere, they announced, Rob, go back. There's a video. Go up, go up, go up, go up. That video right there. That video right there. The Fox. So announced this morning, out of nowhere, the FAA grounds all flights. Go ahead and play this clip. This is in El Paso. Go ahead, Rob. halting all flights to and from el paso texas for 10 days for unspecified special security reasons and they're warning that any pilots who don't comply quote may be intercepted detained interviewed by law enforcement el paso airport confirming the news in a statement saying in part the faa on short notice issued a temporary flight restriction halting all flights to and from el paso commercial airlines operating out of el paso are being informed of the restriction which appears to be security related southwest united american and delta all operate flights there and fort bliss army base is right next door So now here's what's weird about it.

50:04 Tom, I'm going to come to you first. The last time El Paso shut down their airport was 9-11 till 9-13. Two days. And that was when World Trade Center came down. How much bigger can this be for them to shut it down five times longer than 9-11? Hasn't happened for 25 years, Tom. What is going on here? What are you thinking? So I have one take and then I'm going to repeat something. So my take is whenever you see something like this, you ask yourself a question. Okay. If you're grounding the flights in and out, it is an, it is a, outside security threat, meaning airports have closed for two hours. Midway Field, like nine years ago, had to close for two hours because employees pointed out that there was a rogue employee that was in the baggage area. And so the baggage area, in other words, he was an employee in the baggage area and they thought he was bad. So they said, hang on, we don't want him putting something in baggage that goes on an airplane. They shut for

51:04 two hours, they sweep, they're satisfied with it, back up and running. This is is like, does somebody outside the airport, or do they have reliable information that somebody is trying to get a stinger or something there to take down a US aircraft? Why would you stop flights coming into or going out of? You're stopping all traffic. So it's not like something inside, because why would the flight from St. Louis have anything to worry about if it was a baggage handler trying to do something? It's like, wait a minute. So the first thing is they have a security thing. They've got reliable threat information, and they're like, hey, we've got to do this. The second side of it was... It says I was reading, of course, it only takes five seconds for this, is that this is training. They're training us to get used to the government closing down airports as a means of control. So everybody's going to see that on X this morning as well. I set that aside. I

52:00 think they have a security threat that's external and they're having to create perimeter here and they're having to go look for it. Peter, what are you at with this? I have no idea. Luke, what are you thinking? I have no idea. I mean, the questions I would be asking, I have no idea. But, A, I'd be trying to find pilots or something that would know. But what's around there? What industries are around there? Is there a staging area in terms of military relative to cartel activity? I have no idea why they would do that. I agree it's odd. Ten days to shut it down? Yeah, it's a big number. Brandon, be creative. What do you think is a crazy thing? that's going on here yeah well i mean it's the closest state of the board or closest major airport to the border i believe and think about all the countries that we're messing with that are in in that general area in south america uh like we're we're um causing problems for cuba we're causing

52:46 problems for venezuela to some degree we're causing problems for mexico so yeah like tom said maybe they got wind of um some type of surfaced air missile weapon that um went missing and narrowed it down to that area and um or playing it safe while they're looking for that. So, yeah, probably something that's a threat to a flight that's taken off in that general area just because it's that close to the border. That's what I would think. And because of all the activity in South America from us. Rob, how many soldiers at Fort Bliss? Is it 90,000-ish?

53:18 What's the number? Can we see? Fort Bliss, over 8,000 recently deployed to Europe. It's one of the largest U.S. Army bases, covering over 1.3 million acres. Think about that. Yeah, it's a lot. So when you're thinking about 8,000, but what is the total number of soldiers there? Total number of soldiers there. Is that 90K? It's a big number. When I was in the military, we would hear about Fort Bliss. So it could be a couple things. You know, pure speculation. One, you know, hey, if I was the market, I would say these handful of theories.

53:55 One, look over here. Something's going on to El Paso. And then do it from Virginia, Fort Belvoir, or whatever. You use a Fort Benning. And then go there. But put all the attention here, guys. Look over here, everybody. El Paso. Quietly do the mission from somewhere else. It's pretty strategic to do that, right? Okay, 28,700 to 30,000. No, you were right. See, it's 90. You were right. 90,000? What is a 90,000, Tom? When you count everybody together in terms of families, soldiers, and the support. 90K. It's a lot. That's a good-sized base. So that's one. Two, is there some equipment they have there that they're using to go to Iran or do something that they don't want anybody to know about? Maybe. I don't know. Remember how low-key. Trump said something five days ago. He said, just remember what we did with Venezuela. We worked on it for four months, and then all of a sudden we did it when people forgot about it. Who knows what they're doing there? Next is,

54:52 you know, this Epstein story is coming out. and getting the attention of TV, everybody talking about it, this is a pretty good distraction right there, okay? Maybe something there to confuse the audience. I don't know. I just think there's a lot of, you know, weird things. For somebody to shut down an airport for that many days and you only did it for two days when 3,600 people died? There's got to be something going on here that is above our pay grade, and I guess... Peter gave us the best insight on this. It was a very thorough insight Peter gave us.

55:25 All right, let's go to the next one. Golden Dome test. How close are you guys following the Epstein files? Are you following any of it? A little bit? You have some thoughts on it? Let me cover a couple of it. We have to do it anyway. We have to cover it because a couple of things came out. Okay, so two stories. One is Trump told Palm Beach office chief, thank goodness you're stopping Epstein, called Jelaine Maxwell evil in 06, Phone call, FBI document. This is New York Post. Rob, is that a video or what is it that you have here? This is from the actual Epstein files. The highlighted portion talks about Trump contacting, I believe his name was Michael Ryder, which was the chief of police for Palm Beach Police Department. They were the ones investigating the 2006 charges against Epstein. So what does it say in there that you're highlighting? Trump said Maxwell was Epstein's operative. She is evil. And to focus on her, Trump was one of

56:16 the very first people to call when people found out that they were investigating Epstein. This is from October 18th of 2019, an interview of, I believe, Michael Ryder, who was the police chief in Palm Beach. He was a police chief of Palm Beach, and he was a top cop from 01 to 09. And the future president was One of the very first people to call when people found out that authorities were investigating Epstein for sex with girls as young as 14, whom he had hired to give a massage. Thank goodness you're stopping him. Everyone has known he's been doing this.

56:51 Trump was quoted as telling Peter on the call, adding that he got the hell out of there on one occasion when he was around Epstein while teenagers were present. Ryder recounted that Epstein donated $40,000. to the department for the purchase of a machine to review security footages, cut a $90,000 check to buy a fingerprinting machine around the time its first victim came forward and gave more than others to police scholarship fund for children. Tom, how do you process this information? So, you know, what's really interesting, either Trump is crazy like a fox or, you know, forgot. How would you... with all the accusation on Trump, if I had this letter that was out there, unless this was classified, but this appears to be a garden variety summary of an interview you would do with the police. And if I'm Trump, why don't I put this out five years ago? Guys, I thought he was a creep, I said he thought he was a creep, and by the way, go take

57:49 a look at my interview I did with the police. Why do you think? You think he forgot? I don't think he forgot, or do you just hold it, but there's been so much heat and he wants us to go away, Why didn't he play this card earlier unless the FBI, as part of the Epstein investigation, classified the document? Because this was a police, local police interview with Trump, right? That's what they showed it as. So did during the, what was it, the 2014, whatever it was, when Epstein's deal was cut and the investigation was, did they classify it and he couldn't put it out? Okay, so you're thinking that's why. Luke, why are you at with that? What would you do? Well, if that's me, I would say go back and look at the records of the phone call I made in 06. It's documented. I've been saying this for a while. This only makes them look good. It's not like this makes them look bad. It makes them look very

58:41 good. It's like I told you so, Trump. I don't really have a strong feeling on it. My question is kind of like, why are we getting this now, right? You can find a clip of Cindy McCain saying, I think at a Council on Foreign Relations event, decade ago we all knew what he was doing he being Epstein and so like why now I'm always you know and it's all awful it's it's it's very hard to read to be honest and so I haven't read a lot of it so but like why why are we getting this now I don't know maybe it's just time maybe it's just time for it to come out maybe maybe it's part of a bigger plan I don't know yeah Rob has he tweeted about there it is that's the clip right there play that clip Rob Epstein was hiding in plain sight we all knew about him We all knew what he was doing.

59:23 But we had no one that was, no legal aspect that would go after him. They were afraid of him. For whatever reason, they were afraid of him. Unbelievable that the whole market knew about it. Brandon, you look like you want to say something. Yeah. I mean, that's a great point that Tom brings up. But like, why wouldn't he bring it up? Like, for example, when Elon Musk said what he said about Trump last summer, like the peak moment of Trump having a reason to defend himself or during when the Wall Street Journal article came out, I think when he sued them, was that Wall Street Journal? that came out saying that he had the letter. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So like that would have been a great time for it. The letter that was written. The Elon Musk tweet would have been a great time for it. And Trump has a sharp memory. So, you know, like I would think that this would be top of mind for him, like remembering, oh, yeah, I

1:00:05 called the police and reported this. So that is super weird. But I hate the story because it's so annoying. You get like one drip every couple of months. That's crazy, but it doesn't give you anywhere close to the full story. But the pressure has never been this high, Brandon. I know. Yeah. The pressure to leak it has never been this high, Peter. Look, the problem I have with Trump's credibility is there are so many things that I know that he lies about that I just – never can give him the benefit of the doubt given his track record. But it's not just Trump. I mean, I think everybody that had anything to do with Epstein has an incentive to lie about their relationship. You know, so what else would you expect? I mean, no, everybody wants to distance themselves from him. Everyone wants to claim, oh, I knew he was a creep. He was horrible. I stayed away. But obviously that's not the case. There were a lot of people that had very cozy relationships

1:00:58 with Epstein, whether they were involved in any of these alleged activities or not. But they don't even care because it's appearances that get you in trouble. So you have to basically put as much distance between yourself and Epstein as you possibly can. And I think in order to do that, a lot of people end up lying about it. And I know what happens from personal experience with government is first they lie and then they lie again to cover up the fact that they lied the first time. And so I'm sure that that's going on and we're not getting the real story with respect to Epstein. And here you go, Howard Ludnick, of course. Because he lied about his relationship and then when it comes out that he lied, then, okay, what does he do again? Well, let me lie some more. Let me justify it. Play the clip. I think you understand the root of concern here. It's the way you described very emphatically your

1:01:54 first encounter with him in his apartment, said you were disgusted, would never have any contact with him again. Did you in fact make the visit to Jeffrey Epstein's private island? I did have lunch with him as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation. My wife was with me, as were my four children and nannies. I had another couple with, they were there as well with their children. and we had lunch on the island. That is true for an hour and we left with all of my children, with my nannies and my wife all together.

1:02:34 We were on family vacation. We were not apart. To suggest there was anything untoward about that in 2012, I don't recall why we did it, but we did it. Mr. Secretary, again, as I said, there's... Thoughts. Well, I mean, I think prior to that, he had... said he had no encounter with Epstein. And so then when it came out that he was there, now he had to admit that he was there. But look, I mean, was he there for an hour? I mean, when he's on his yacht, he happens to be going by Little St. James and he pulls in and out and in an hour he's already gone. I mean, it takes probably almost an hour just to dock and get your boat out of there.

1:03:15 I mean, I don't know. But I think that maybe he didn't do anything wrong initially, but he didn't even want to admit even a superficial relationship because even that was going to be potentially toxic. So I think everybody's instinct is just to lie about anything, any connection they had. And then if they get caught in a lie, they want to lie some more to minimize it. So I don't know that we'll ever find out the truth because none of these guys wants to tell the truth. Yeah, so Rob, there's another clip, Rob, if you can play this one here. This is Ro Khanna naming the six people that they finally mentioned yesterday. And one of them, the last name he mentions, I'm not surprised, but one of them created a ton of controversy. Go ahead, Rob. Congressman Massey and I went to the Department of Justice to read the unredacted Epstein files. We spent about two hours there, and we learned... that 70 to 80 percent of the files

1:04:21 are still redacted. In fact, there were six wealthy, powerful men that the DOJ hid for no apparent reason. When Congressman Massey and I pointed this out to the Department of Justice, they acknowledged their mistake, and now they have revealed the identity of these six powerful men. These men are Salvatore Navarro, Zorab Mikolads, Lepig Leonor, Nikola Kaputa, Sultan Ahmed bin Suleyam, CEO of Dubai Ports World, and billionaire businessman Leslie Wexner. Okay, Rob, so we know about Leslie Wexner. He's the Victoria's Secret guy. He's the guy that gave, gifted Epstein for no reason, The biggest private residence in Manhattan. I think it's 54,000 square feet, 77 million bucks, give or take price point. So that we know, that there's something going on over him. That's not a guy necessarily you trust. But how about the other fellow, Rob?

1:05:30 What do we know about the other fellow? What do we know about him and what was he involved in? Was there any... messages, exchanges that you can share as well? Yes. So this is Sultan Ahmed bin Suliam, CEO of DP World. I believe they're a logistics company based in the Middle East. And then this was the email that I found right here where Epstein is emailing him regarding a torture video of some sort back in April of 2000. A torture video? Yes. Yes. Down at the bottom, where are you? Are you okay? I love the torture video. That was Epstein II, reportedly, according to the reports, to the Sultan.

1:06:09 So he loved the torture video that the Sultan sent him? That's what it appears. Yes, that's the direction of this communication. What other exchanges are there, Rob? I'd have to go back and look. Was there one that said, you know, the girl was all about business, not about... Yes. So have you guys seen this one or no? No. Yeah, so apparently he emails him and it says, listen, the girl you introduced me to was more about business, not about...

1:06:39 We almost can't even read it to you, but we'll let you see it for yourself. Zoom in. Let me find the actual term here. Yeah, so anyway, so this one's on the list as well. Tom, do you think as they're getting to this point right there, yes, Soleiman responded according to the email chain after several attempts, For several months we managed to meet in New York. There's a misunderstanding. She wanted some business. While I only wanted some, you know, you can read the next. Sex. Praise Allah, there are still people like you, Epstein replied. Can you imagine that? Wait, praise Allah? There are people like you who don't want to do business, just want to go play around. Do you think the pressure is so much that is at the tipping point that they have to show? Because... Two days ago, they allowed Anna Paulina Luna and a bunch of the, you know, representatives to come in and take a look. You can't record anything. You can't take your phone. And they all came

1:07:34 out disgusted, the things they read about Jelaine Maxwell. I think Jelaine Maxwell was in a hearing yesterday or two days ago being questioned. And the way she answered things, yeah, which one is this, Rob? This is where she pleads the fifth when questioned. Go for it. Ms. Maxwell, were you a close friend and confidant of Jeffrey Epstein? I would like to answer your question, but on the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer this question and any related questions. My habeas petition is pending in the Southern District of New York. I therefore invoke my right to silence under the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution. Okay, you can pause it right there. By the way, there are people that are calling for the resignation of Howard Lutnick. for the story that he told the White House is saying, we're not doing anything. We're staying with the guy. So they're keeping him. And then at the same time, while this is taking place, you know, one of the

1:08:34 stories comes out by Joe Rogan about Epstein. Rob, if you want to pull that up, that's probably the funniest one. He's talking to Bobby Kennedy's wife and Epstein's name comes up. And they, they, they, apparently there was a moment where he wanted to meet with Rogan. This is Rogan's response. Go for it. I'm in the files for not going. Huh? Yeah, I'm in the files for not going. Jeffrey Epstein was trying to meet with me. Oh, I did see that. Yeah, and I was like, what? Oh, yeah, thanks. Yeah. Aren't you glad? Yeah, but I would have never went anyway.

1:09:07 It's like, it's not even a possibility that I would have went. Especially after I Googled him. I was like, what the fuck are you talking about? This was like 2017. One of my guests was trying to get me to meet him. I was like, bitch, are you high? What the fuck are you talking about? For what reason would you? What would be if I was a guy who is like sucking up to the rich and powerful if I was really interested in hanging out with rich and powerful people You know, it's crazy. It's so good. That's so crazy. But yeah, some people I was like people get intoxicated by being in a circle of rich and powerful people even if they're not it's a little weird I don't even know why this is a little weird being why is this a little weird? Not not for Joe, but I mean I I think Bobby's talked about that he was on a flight with Epstein a couple times with the kids, if I'm not mistaken, Rob.

1:09:58 So, you know, it's a very interesting conversation. Now, listen, you know, a lot of people did stuff with Epstein on flights and different things. Hey, I'm going to this. Just the other day, we're going to D.C. to have a visit in D.C. A couple of the guys here that were going to the same event, they're like, hey, can we jump on a private jet and go with you? And we couldn't do it. These are good guys. So these types of things happen when you're going on business trips. Can I hop on with you and do this? But, you know, for Joe to say that and that was documented, that is the best way to be in the Epstein files. I don't think you can be in the Epstein files in a better way. There's so many people that are in the Epstein files. I mean, I'm in there a few times. I mean, but it's got nothing to do with Epstein. There's just so many documents. What do they say about you?

1:10:45 They were just – somebody was just referencing me. They saw me on television or they read something I wrote. It's just in the email. You are in the Epstein files, Peter Schiff. Congratulations to you. But there are a lot of people. Just start – What does it say with Peter Schiff? Put names in there. You'll see it. What does it say? This is the Department of Justice's website where you can search by terms in the Epstein library, and there are – Four references to Mr. Schiff. References. So they're communicating about Peter. That's what they're saying. I'm sure they're saying how wrong he's about the market all the time. So at least they were complimentary about that part. Okay, so Tom, I'll give you the final thoughts on the Epstein story and then we'll move on. I think this is getting hot enough that finally the dam has to break. You know, we had something like this happen in the nation's history before. Maybe not like Epstein's with a number of people, but it was

1:11:40 the Watergate files and the Watergate tapes. And when Nixon resigned, finally all these tapes were released. And we heard Nixon and Kissinger saying things about China. We heard Nixon saying things about senators. We heard people that were in, you know, two House of Representatives that were in the Oval Office talking down to other congressmen and congresswomen while they spoke to the president and didn't know it was there. But finally the dam broke and it all came out. And everything came out. And it was impossible. And so the nation got over it. They said, okay, so Nixon's gone. Ford's not going to get reelected. He was never elected. But Ford's not going to win the election was the assumption. You know, Chuck Colson was in print. Gordon Liddy, Ehrlichman, J.R. Haldeman, Archibald Cox was the special prosecutor. All of a sudden there was no more questions. You're old enough to remember this. Remember this? It just stopped. Because

1:12:34 we're all like, okay, okay. So now we know what happened. And I think what's about to happen here is what is there left to protect? So much. Right? There's so much left to protect. You think? Yeah. But there's more Bill Gates. But it's like, okay, who's just like Bill Gates? Who's just like this guy? Who's just like this guy? And I think the dominoes are going to fall. Last night I was asked, funny thing, I got home in the kitchen and I was talking to Kim D. Brooke because Epstein thinks is everywhere. Even Brooke just casually looking in the news for F1 testing runs into Epstein stories. No, seriously. And she's asked, does her F1 isn't doing preseason testing? She says, there's all this news about Epstein. And I said, look, it goes like this. Right now, if everyone is released that's in here, it's like everyone's got a Mexican standoff and a mutual suicide pack right now because You know you're in there. I know I'm in there. I'm talking about a

1:13:31 bunch of people together. If they break your name and you bring me into it, I'm breaking this. So it's like, you know what I'm saying? All these people are in like this mutual suicide pact. And if that goes down, I think we lose probably 40% of the capacity to fund elections in this country, which maybe isn't a bad thing. But meanwhile, while all this is going on, I think we're on the verge of a major economic crisis and we're focusing our attention in the wrong place. How did I know you would get all the way back? Yes, the story is.

1:14:05 And I think the main goal of the Trump administration is just to try to blow more air into the bubble and hope it doesn't pop until he's out of dodge. But I don't think that's going to work. I think there's too many holes in this bubble right now. Let me go to this. Here's Scott Bessent. Rob, if you want to pull up Scott Bessent. Peter Schiff is obviously a massive fan of Trump and Scott Besson. If you want to pull this one up about what Scott had to say is going to be happening in 2026. Go ahead, Rob. growth are you expecting for 2026? We're looking at Friday's market rally. The Dow was up 1,200 points, 2.5%. The Nasdaq was up 1%. Even gold was up. And when you look at year to date, actually gold has outperformed stocks. Gold up 14% year to date. The S&P 500 up 1%. Tell us your expectations for growth and also a word on gold. What's driving that move as well? Well, Maria, what I can tell you is what we are seeing the cyclical components of the

1:15:02 market expand. So that's why the Dow hit a new high. But importantly, the Russell, which is a small cap index, has hit a new high. We're seeing the industrial sectors under the market hit new highs. And in my 35, 40 years on Wall Street, that tells me Wall Street is telling you that Main Street is about to prosper. We are seeing a big cyclical recovery. The president's agenda set the table. in 2025 and now the american people are going to benefit in 26 and that's what the stock market is telling us stock market lives in the future and i think we're going to have very strong economic growth and very strong job gains and very strong real income growth tom do you agree here's what i think i see what he's saying i think the k-shape um what we're seeing right now is going to continue Right now you are seeing layoffs. Some people were blaming AI. I don't buy into all of that. I think some of it is AI washing and

1:15:59 they're moving and they're making. And by the way, it was UPS and FedEx was like 54% of the total layoffs are coming from transportation. That was coming out of all the holiday where they have extra drivers and extra things going on on holiday deliveries. And we've also kind of popped the bubble on that. Here's what I think. The consumer is not going to be the recipient. because they've got more paychecks and because or higher paychecks and they can go do this. They're $1.28 trillion in credit card debt right now. Assuming that's stats correct. I share your skepticism about a lot of these stats. This is number one. But those that have major indexes on managed IRAs and 401ks, the consumers are going to benefit there because those balances are going to go up. Inflated dollars, yes. And on Main Street, I think that's what you're going to see. And in terms of Wall Street, you're seeing it right now. You're seeing that what's happening with the Dow and you're seeing what's happening

1:17:00 with the P.E. Yeah. First of all, you know, whenever Scott Besson talks, you know, you're not getting honest opinion. He's there to basically pump up Trump. And so whatever he's asked, he's going to spin it. I'm not fully on that page. So that's not my opinion. Yeah, that is my opinion. And you'll notice that he conveniently sidestepped the point that Maria made about gold and how gold is up so much more than stocks. He didn't even want to go there to acknowledge the fact that stocks are actually falling in real value. But the main reason that U.S. stocks are up is because everybody expects the Fed to print more money. We're going to cut interest rates. We're going to have more stimulus. And that is why the markets are going up. They're not going up because... of a productivity boom or because it's forecasting a strong economy, stocks are going up for the same reason they went up under Biden, because we're blowing more air into the bubble. They're looking to the Fed.

1:17:56 If the Fed was doing the right thing, which would be to raise interest rates, which is what they should be doing, they prematurely stopped raising rates. They're too low. And if the Fed continued to shrink its balance sheet, which is what it should be doing instead of expanding it, the stock market would be collapsing. Luke. I think he's kind of staying on point with the Trump administration in terms of, hey, we're... Do you like him? Do I like him? Yes is the short answer. I like him. I think he very much knows what he's talking about. I do think the nature of his role is such that he has to be a bit of a politician. And we've seen signs of that, right? We sat down with Tucker in April of last year and said, hey, we have all the leverage against China.

1:18:44 I was like... No, that's not true. And he has to know that. There's other things he's kind of said here or there where he has to know. He's been in markets 40 years. He knows. He worked for Soros for 15 years. Right, right. He knows markets, right? So there have been things he has said where you kind of, as a market practitioner, you go, he doesn't really believe that, but I get the seat he's in. there's an element where he has to sort of toe the line. How hard is it to find a guy like that who can talk technical terms with anybody at the highest level but also knows how to sit with media, get asked the tough questions, media trained, and be able to take the information that's technical and give it to the average person to understand when he needs to do that as well? It's hard to do. I think that part of it is hard to do. I think he's kind of a – But I want to get to this next story. I'm a fan. Which is going to be a reflection of what's

1:19:41 going on with the economy. All right. So story comes out. Job hunters are so desperate that they're paying people to get hired and recruited. And by the way, this is not a story from Inquirer. This is a story from Wall Street Journal. So landing a white collar job is getting so tough that candidates, not companies, are paying recruiters to match them with positions. Through good economic times and bad, recruiters have usually operated the other way around. Companies pay them to find talent for tough-to-fill positions. Now, though, job seekers are hiring a new crop of what are called reverse recruiters to help them crack the competitive market. Daniel Bjarano, 36 years old, signed up for reverse recruiting service, a referral last year after receiving an email pitch from the company. Refers AI agent connected him with an executive at Golden.com. volunteer management company which was looking

1:20:36 for platform engineer and data scientist. Bejarano got the offer after several interviews. He then paid, referred 20% of his first month's pay once it landed in his bank account. Tom, your thoughts on this? So I think what's going on here is a couple things going on. Is it tougher to find a job? Yes. In many sectors it is right now. Is the job market tightening? Yes, it appears to be. And it may be worse in certain sectors. It may be worse in certain geographies where you live. So yes, it's good to have a Sherpa that's going to take you up to Everest and going to help you through it. The other thing is that companies are having a horrible time trying to filter out Incoming inquiries for jobs and it's hard to have yourself show up in that We see it for many of the clients at bet David consulting. They talk about that There are so many bots and so many fake resumes We put I'll give you a real-world example. We put up a job opening for a business analyst and we were

1:21:37 inundated by a set of resumes that were coming from offering us people from a certain country, but there were brokers in the middle trying to offer them to us and saying, and we can help you with the H-1B. That spam was on top of good candidates that we wanted to see, that we wanted to review, good quality people, You know, citizens ready to work. And so that's one of the reasons that, but David Consulting, we built higher metrics to help filter that. Right now, filter is the headline here. It's not what they're talking about. People are actually paying to get a company to help them filter in to find a job the same way that companies are willing to pay money for software to help them filter. What does that mean? It means it's broken. The system is broken. Let me explain to you what this means. This is like saying the market has changed so much because of female-driven AI that men create that women are paying men to go

1:22:38 on a date with them. That's the best comparison I can make. That's a good comparison. That's a weird thing to happen. Why do you think we're here? Why do you think we're here? Where people are paying for recruiters to place them at a company. Well, look, there's no question that we have a weak labor market in the United States. I mean, first of all, look at the data that came out last week. Challenger reported the largest January announced layoffs since January 2009, where we were in the financial crisis, a great recession. Look at the jolts numbers that just came out. There was a collapse in job openings. So we have a weak labor market. The only thing strong is inflation. And you know, you have the clip from Fox News with Bessett on there. Well, I was on Fox and Friends not too long ago on a Saturday. And unfortunately, I'll probably never be on again because I went on and I told the truth about consumer prices and inflation. And Trump went ballistic

1:23:40 on Truth Social and just chastised Fox for having me on, said I was a jerk, said I was a loser, that I was just a Trump hater. And they said, find the booker who put this jerk on. And ever since then, nobody will return my emails at Fox News. I think they got me completely banned from the network for speaking honestly. You know, Trump actually said that I was wrong because I claimed that prices were going up when, according to Trump, they're going down. They're going down massively. So the cost of living, according to Donald Trump— By the way, did you vote for him? Well, I live in Puerto Rico, so it doesn't matter. I voted for him. So the only time I voted for him where it counted was the first time he ran in 2016. I lived in Connecticut then, and I was able to vote, although— lost connecticut is this the tweet why would fox and friends uh we can put on a stock broker named peter schiff a trump hating loser

1:24:36 who has already proven to be wrong either the show made a mistake or it's uh heading in a different direction he thinks prices are going up when in fact they're coming down gasoline hit 199 yesterday in certain states and is big since biden other prices are almost down biden caused affordability crisis i'm fixing it along with everything else much of it like the border is already fixed check out the Booker. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. But I actually encouraged all of my followers to vote for Trump over Harris. So I probably got the president a lot of votes. It's not like I have a, you know, a small following. A lot of people do pay attention to what I say. And I encourage people. In fact, that was a big Trump defender when all the lawfare was going out against him for January 6th and a lot of other things. I completely supported Trump. Donald Trump when I thought he was in the right. So I'm not just your typical Trump hater who's got Trump derangement

1:25:29 syndrome. The people who I think have Trump derangement syndrome are the people that support him no matter what. No matter what he does, no matter what lies he tells, if you're just going to support him, you're the one that's deranged. Luke. Sorry, what was the original question again? I apologize. Job. Job. People are paying people to get a job. Yeah, I think ultimately, you know, Tom said something interesting about the H-1B, that these get flooded with the H-1B, and that was a huge political debate around. And it's interesting, if you look, something I've observed at least, any time you have an economic policy floated in this country that looks to boost American wages, whether that be H-1B limits, whether that be... border restrictions and deportations, etc., they don't get framed in economic terms. Never. They never, ever get framed in economic terms. They always get framed in the media in social terms, in social

1:26:34 justice terms. And it's not I'm the social justice guy, but if you had a fair and balanced media, they would say, here's the social justice angle and America, If we remove this many workers at H-1B or whatever, your wages as a graduating engineer from Cal or Stanford or the University of Michigan would go up over time by this much. And if you were a laborer and there were this many deportations, over time your wages would rise this much. There's a reason why the media never frames the economic argument for these policies is people would vote for them and that's not what they want. The powers that be want to cap wages. These are methods they use to cap wages. So first, I think it's really interesting, Tom, your point on H-1Bs that, okay, there are this flood. End of the day, I add that H-1B to the graduating kids. It tells me what the flow of funds, what you were highlighting, which is, there's too much

1:27:38 supply, there's not enough demand for those kids, for those jobs, ultimately. My point was, I'm sorry, give me one second. My point was, Think about how hard it is for us to find good candidates in the crowd because we have to get through the spam of these machines that are being run by brokers that are trying to throw H-1Bs when they see certain position titles. Now think about the good person on the other end trying to find a job and break through that who is now in a tightening job market where it's harder to find the jobs and saying, damn it, I need help to break through, Pat. You know what I'm going to do?

1:28:10 I'm going to pay somebody to see if they can get me to the front of the line. How do I get TSA PreCheck to get through the front of this line so these people can see me so I can get a job. I think that the job search in the digital world is a little bit broken right now. We just heard that half the traffic on the Internet was bots, right? And we're seeing the bots in our inbox where we're trying to find great candidates. So I think there's a couple things going on here between X economy and availability of jobs, tightening market, but then how hard it is for us to filter out. Brandon, you're 30 years old. Your friends are looking for jobs, right? You went to school.

1:28:45 You got a bachelor's and a master's in national security. When you talk to your friends that are looking for jobs, what are they telling you? Yeah, so a lot of people have really similar skill sets, like kind of cookie-cutter products of college, and I think that's part of the problem, too. I mean, it's like, you know, the range for somebody with an average degree is probably, I don't know, 60 to 85,000 for like a job they're applying for. And, you know, the skill sets are usually like liberal arts to something with math or STEM. STEM, you'll end up doing better.

1:29:10 But this is a cross current of like so many weird things. Like it's such a weird situation, but I think the things that are causing it is things like distorting the economy with, you know, artificially low or high interest rates. You know, somebody else being involved with that. The zombie companies. So like companies that shouldn't exist do exist. Companies that would exist if we weren't interfering in it don't exist yet. The H1BV I was trying to hire cheap labor, right? So all the illegal immigrants. So a lot of it's not one thing in particular, but it's all these things that are creating this like bizarre backwards dystopian situation. So, I mean, it's just a product of government being involved where it shouldn't be and not being involved where it should be. Peter. And certainly because of the massive subsidy that government provides to people. I mean, we graduate a lot more people with liberal arts degrees than would graduate in

1:29:57 a free market. So we're putting these students into a job market that doesn't have jobs for what they just wasted taxpayer money studying for four or five years. You know, if we had a free market in college, we wouldn't have all the student debt and we'd have much lower tuition. And the only people that would go to college would be people who would actually benefit from the degree. A lot of people would just get jobs right out of high school and maybe even not even go to high school. And we might actually have quality jobs for those people to move into if the federal government or if the Fed didn't artificially suppress interest rates, if we didn't have savings that could finance capital investment. So our whole economy has been screwed up by debt. government intervention. But I wanted to point out, you know, Donald Trump is makes a big deal about cheap gas. Well, oil prices are now up about 20 percent since they hit the lows. All the oil stocks are hitting 52

1:30:49 week highs. They're indicating that oil prices are going to rise. And I think the one thing the president's been hanging his hat on cheap gas is going to go away. I think by the time the midterm elections roll around, we're going to be looking at 80 to 100 barrel oil. And everything else is going to be a lot more expensive. So the story that inflation is dead and buried is going to be completely gone. And the box that the Republicans are going to be in, unfortunately, in the midterms, is they're going to be in the position of trying to lie to the public to convince them that a bad economy is good. Whereas the Democrats are going to be able to be honest about how bad the economy is. And they're just going to lie that they're going to fix it. So you say that.

1:31:34 But, Peter, this is the question. Then why is it that Trump's approval rating with the people that voted for him went up from 74 percent to 79 percent? Well, his overall approval ratings are pretty weak. No, with his face, with the people that voted for him, not – Not overall, because overall could be mainstream media bashing him, negativity, anything and everything they can are going to say negative things about him. But why are the people that voted for him happier than when they voted for him? I think, look, I think Trump voters really like Trump. I think Trump is almost like a modern day folk hero at this point. And I think, you know, the fact that, you know, he almost died, right? You know, he survived that assassination attempt. I think really... know raised his his level in the eyes of the public to that kind of folk hero so I think that people who like the president just really like him you know they they you know and they listen to him

1:32:33 and and and their things why do they like why do they like because he's he's basically sticking his thumb in the eye of the establishment he's telling them what they want to hear about shaking things up and about breaking why else you think they like them all that stuff is gibberish right specific results What happened to crime from a year ago? Down 20%. Murder. What happened to the border? Zero. How important is security to them? The amount of perception. No, no, that's not perception. No, no, no. There's two different things. Perception is, hey, you're 6'9 with a 38-inch vertical leap. My perception is you're going to score 30 points tonight. And you play basketball. The reality is you suck. You score zero. No, this is... Order went to zero, right? So crime went down. American people feel safer. The world respects America again. I don't know that the world, I would disagree that the world respects America again. Oh, really? No one's coming knocking on the

1:33:32 door? No, no. That's all made up. I mean, if the world was respecting America more, they would be, the fact that everybody is begging to make deals. Look, the world is moving on from the United States. Look, look, look at China. I mean, China's trade with the U.S. is down substantially, but their trade with the rest of the world is up substantially to the point where they're exporting more now than they were before our tariffs. So I think the world has less respect for the United States now than it did in the past. But American voters, yeah, it may resonate with them. I think they like the fact that Trump is pushing back against the political correctness movement that was kind of spearheaded by the Democrats with the woke agenda. And I think there has been a cultural backlash against that. And I think that has been a positive of Trump in pushing back against that. But yes, I think the U.S. is

1:34:33 less respected. In fact, look what Trump just did with Greenland. I mean, basically threatening an ally that, hey, if we can't make a deal on our terms to buy Greenland, we're going to invade. We're going to send the U.S. military in there because nobody can stop us because we have this powerful military and we can do whatever we want. I think that sent a very, very bad message to the rest of the world. Even though Trump ultimately backed down from that, he contemplated it in public. He actually talked about using our military to annex Greenland. You know, that did not go over well. Look at what's happening with Canada.

1:35:14 Look at our relationship with Canada. You know, we're driving everybody closer to China, closer to Russia, because Trump is around, going around the world, castigating every other country. Respectfully, you sound like such a weak leader, and you ran for president. But wait a minute, but wait a minute. You sound like it, because to me, you ran for president before. I never ran for president. I ran for Senate once. Did you think about running for president or was there a speculation or story or something like that? Not seriously, but I mean, I did run for U.S. Senate in 2010, but I didn't even win the Republican nomination, but I ran in the Republican primaries in the state of Connecticut for U.S. Senate. Right. But to me, when I'm listening to this and this guy's sitting there going around, you know, presenting ideas that we've never had before, a prior guy that was in there was doing what? Nothing. What ideas?

1:36:07 Bad ideas? Are you kidding me? Like for us to be protected and you, you know, position China in a way that people are sitting there saying what's going to happen next with China? We've driven people closer to China. Other countries are developing relationships with China that they didn't have. Look what's happening in South America. Look at how much more popular, you know, they're building these deep water ports in South America so that China can trade with this continent without having to go through Long Beach or San Pedro. I mean, the United States is being pushed out, and they're going to be a lot closer to Canada. Canada is our biggest trading partner, but they're going to end up doing a lot more business with China over time. Mexico is. Yeah, I think you truly are underestimating the amount of things that these guys have done. There is a reason why you go and CNN, when you go, well, I'll go to CNN. I mean, CNN, nobody hates

1:37:01 Trump more than CNN. And CNN will tell you, they're Democrats. are not for the Democratic Party right now. They can't stand their policies. They're at a worse approval rating with their own base. On the Republican side, CNN shows that people that voted for Trump are happier with him today than before. For a guy like me that I'm seeing, a guy named Jimmy Carter gives up Panama. It's like, ah, it's okay, let him keep it, let him take care of this. And then now he's sitting there saying, wait a minute, China can go out there and do damage to us at Panama Canal. We gotta figure out where to take control of this.

1:37:35 It's building the relationship there for us to be protected. China's getting into Venezuela. He's coming closer to say, you can do what you want to do there. Don't touch the Western Hemisphere. I feel safer with the guy at the top that's negotiating like that. I do. And a lot of American people do as well in many different ways. You may have your, you know, be a little bit butthurt because of some things maybe, you know, that didn't go your way. And I know sometimes you play the contrarian. That's kind of your shtick that you play that role. Financially, I've never made this much money in my life. I made so much money during the Trump presidency. So I'm not talking my book. Everything Trump is doing is making me richer.

1:38:11 And safer. And safer. safer well i don't know i mean i mean i don't feel safe well you live in puerto rico our government is very corrupt i mean i know that from firsthand i mean we have an extremely corrupt government go back to safer go back to safer let's let's be fair now do you feel safer honestly i don't well i don't feel any different as far as that where did you live before well i was living in connecticut uh before trump won i mean i was living in i mean in puerto rico yeah i was living in puerto rico during crime ridden fairfield county Well, I haven't lived in Fairfield County since 2017. I have a house. Well, then you're not everybody. You're not everybody.

1:38:46 That's my point. Let me explain to you. You're not everybody, though, because the average American feels safer. Maybe. No, it's not maybe. No, no, it's not. You can't say maybe. Polls show that everybody in America trusts Republicans to protect the border more than Democrats. You live in Puerto Rico. This is pure data that's coming out from people. Well, we'll see. Look, it's not like I like the Democrats. I was probably one of the biggest critics of Biden out there, more so than most Republicans. But, you know, I criticize bad policies regardless of what policy, what party is promoting them. Your cherry-picking policy. No, no. Well, no, I just cherry-picking bad policy. No, no, but you can do that. And I mainly focus on economic policy because that's really where my area of expertise is. And so when I see bad economic policy and look, look at what look at what the president is advocating. You know, he wants he wants to control credit card interest rates at

1:39:41 10 percent. You know, when when Harris talked about price controls on groceries. Oh, she's a socialist. But Donald Trump wants to control the price of credit cards. And that's not socialism. And in fact, if you look at his. I mean, he does not want the free market to allocate capital. He wants to pick the winners and losers himself. He wants to decide what companies and what industries should get capital and then use the power of government to direct capital there. I don't know if that's fair on credit cards, because what the president did is he came out and floated that.

1:40:11 And there was a lot of response, including here from us, that said, wait a minute, do you want to really get in and do that? But it was part of a broader narrative that he was on for that whole week about affordability, that we have to do some things for affordability. for the American consumer. And then he backed down on the credit card stuff because he got feedback from Jamie Dimon and others like this. But guess what he forced? He forced a dialogue on the subject and he forced a dialogue on accountability. Now, if you look at all the policies across, I'm a little shocked. I would love to hear you say, you know, on safety and the border, I think he did a good job. My area of expertise is economics. I'm really not happy about it. And I've been very vocal about it.

1:40:52 But it's like you've got to be capable of giving the credit on something that's benefiting a lot of Americans. And safety at the border and murders are down. Those are facts. Those are not stats that are going to get revised. But the affordability problem is a function of the big, beautiful bill. I mean, the fact that Donald Trump signed on to a legislation. Affordability started. I've got to stop you. Affordability started by your own words. What happened after COVID when the Biden administration... all that money in there and it started that started under Trump Trump signed on to all the COVID bailouts and all the stimulus the Fed's last under Biden you got to be fair with the same thing would have happened under Trump but it didn't reelected Biden was the president yes could have should have and that was Biden was the president was a lucky break for Trump because now he could blame everything on Biden

1:41:42 had Trump won it would have been the same inflation it was the same policies look at what they did with the big beautiful bill I don't know all they did you can't balance credit they With criticism on certain policies. All they did was they cut taxes on tips. They cut taxes on overtime. Cut taxes on Social Security. These are highly inflationary tax cuts. They don't grow the economy. Government spending, meanwhile, increased. All of the Biden spending was preserved under Trump and increased. They didn't cut. They had an opportunity to cut some of the Biden spending, and they didn't cut any of it. They increased it. Yeah. So you know what's crazy? You know, like last week we had this guy on, Jared Moskovitz, who's a liberal. a Democrat. He's not a Trump guy. But you know what he was capable of doing? He was capable of saying, these are the things I like that he does. These are the things

1:42:29 I'm fully against. OK, you lose credibility when it's like, no, I can't give him credit here or there for us. I sat there and I said, I don't know if I want to put the 10 percent credit card limit there, but I like the fact that he called Elizabeth Warren and at least he's willing to reach to the other side of the aisle. And Elizabeth Warren's like, holy shit, he called me. What did he say? He asked me for advice. Really? Well, I'm not going to give him credit for quoting a ridiculous proposal like government fixed price controls. I mean, if he doesn't understand why that's a bad thing. This is the first time in a long time that it's good that somebody is willing. The Epstein files, what do we call it here? The biggest flipping fumble of this administration. Biggest F up on what you did. We're comfortable saying that. But you lose credibility. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. Ask how many millions of people that live by

1:43:17 the border are happy what the hell is going on when the kids are playing outside. Go ahead and ask how they feel. Go call the people that live in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, and San Diego and ask, how do you feel when the kids are playing outside today versus a year and a half ago, two years ago? Ask them. Ask the stories of people that were worried about what the hell is going to happen when my wife's going to work, when my mother's going to work. See what they tell you. Not everything is money. There's a bunch of different things that you got to do. See what it looks like when it works on World Economic Forum. Everybody stops and is watching this guy speaking in news goes up on stage who's going to be the candidate that's going to be opposing him on the other side tries to make fun of his own country that he's representing absolutely embarrassing for somebody to go out there and do that so for me on the

1:43:56 highest stage i'm proud that he's negotiating on our behalf i don't ever give somebody a job as an executive when you hire and i expect a hundred percent of perfect decisions I don't make 100% perfect decisions when somebody messes into my company. But you're trusting my instinct. And my instinct is if I have somebody in the boardroom that's going to sit there and negotiate on my behalf, I don't think there's anybody in America that would have done a better job of negotiating on our behalf than this guy. What is he negotiating? What are you referring to? What is he negotiating?

1:44:31 What is he negotiating? What are you talking about? Are you not following what's going on? What do you mean what is he negotiating? No, you tell me. What are people listening to and watching and they're seeing others, you know, under every single one of these guys? Are you talking about trade deals that you think he's negotiating? So you're saying Biden negotiated better? You're saying Obama negotiated better with Iran? You think Biden or Obama negotiated better with Venezuela? What do you think they negotiated? What did they do? You're talking about trade deals. I'm not talking trade deals. But the best thing to do is just eliminate our tariffs and bring them to zero.

1:45:10 It doesn't matter what the rest of the world does. The best policy is free trade. Allow Americans to freely trade with anyone they want. There's nothing that needs to negotiate. But the speech that he made at the economic forum... backfired, he went out there and claimed that the whole global economy only works because of America. That if it wasn't for America buying everything on credit that the world produces, that the world economy would collapse. As if, you know, they would have nothing to do with all their factories if they weren't making the goods available to Americans. America does not drive the global economy. We're the caboose. We get pulled along. The power of the economy is production. It's The world can produce goods. It doesn't need us to consume those goods. They're perfectly capable of consuming their real goods. Really? It doesn't need us to consume those goods? No. Wow. Of course not. I'll give you 31 trillion reasons. By

1:46:02 the way, I am so glad we invited you today on the podcast. And by the way, Rob, did we invite or did Peter say he's in town to be here? Well, you invited me before. And then you asked me to pay you for a private jet. I said, I'm not paying you for a private jet. I said, if you want to get done, he'll come down here. So I wait until I come by myself. No problem. But I am so glad you're here today. I'm so glad you're here today. And a market gets to hear you because you still can't find yourself to give credit to what this guy's done. Well, look. The last year and whatever he's done. No, it has nothing to do with, okay, you know, is the stuff he's done on the border good or bad? The bigger macro stuff overshadows it. And when we end up with a total socialist Democrat in 2028 because of how horrible the economy is, whatever good things were done are going to be erased by that. I mean, the bigger picture is much broader

1:46:54 than some of the things that he's done that are good. And I've given him credit. along the way for things that I thought he was right. But the bigger picture stuff, the more important stuff is so wrong. And again, for you to misunderstand the fact, the fact above security and safety, I'm sorry. How safe are we going to be? What is above safety and security? 12 to 15 million people came here last four years. Yeah, wait a minute. You don't live in America to know what that feels like. You live in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is part of America. But it's not the same as living under the border. It's not El Paso. You don't know what the border is. What do you mean? We're a Spanish country. What border do you have? What border do you have? We're an island, but I mean. The average person sat in America last four years saying, what the hell is going on to crime? And you can't sit there and say, what happened to crime? Listen, there

1:47:45 is nothing we do if we're not safe. Nothing. The brain doesn't work if it's not safe. If I can't breathe, I don't think about how the stock market is doing. If I can't have oxygen right now, I don't say, hey, I'm about to die. Can you tell me what Bitcoin's at? Where's gold at? Because I don't give a shit about oxygen. We're safe for the first time in many years. That's very important to the average American making $60,000, not to guys like us worth hundreds of millions of dollars. To us, we're going to be safe no matter what. For me, it's if the average guy doesn't feel safe, that's got a wife, husband, kids that are willing to go out and play in a regular public park. What the hell does America look like? I mean, you've got to give a little bit of credit what this guy's doing for America to be this safe. This is what the average person looks at first. It's not about where he gets... And then comes everything else.

1:48:31 Look, if on the broader scheme of things, if I think the policies are wrong and we're headed for an economic crisis that are going to get blamed... on the Republican Party, they're gonna get blamed on capitalism, they're gonna get blamed on everything that people believe that Trump stands for, but he doesn't. And the problems predate Trump. I mean, Trump was part of it when he was president during his first term, but we have been kicking the can down the road for multiple administrations of both parties. Everybody makes the problems worse, and everybody hopes that it doesn't collapse on their watch.

1:49:05 Well, we're in very grave danger of it blowing up now under Trump's watch. And the things that he's done that are positive are going to disappear beneath that problem. Why, though? Why, though? Why? Because when you're looking at a massive collapse in the dollar and consumer prices soaring like we've never seen before in this country, when you're looking at widespread shortages and empty shelves and rolling blackouts because the dollar has collapsed and we can no longer afford to import all the goods that the rest of the world produces. And when there's an economic boom that's taking place outside the United States in the emerging markets because the world is no longer burdened with having to support the U.S. economy, when the world can now consume what it produces and invest its savings domestically instead of loaning its costs. Explain to me why all these countries and companies said they're going to invest trillions of dollars

1:50:00 in America. They said that because Donald Trump wants to hear that. That's what you tell Donald Trump. But wait a minute. How come we've never seen that before? What do you mean? No, no. This gets back to the whole reversal of Main Street versus Wall Street. Because when you think about it, what has been the losers versus winners since the China productivity miracle? What did we do? We sent jobs and factories to China. We brought consumer goods in here. We sent them the dollars, they take the dollars, they reinvest them in our markets. And that was the cycle and that it's broken down. I think part of why we're seeing these companies that are moving to invest, and there's a couple different CEO surveys that have come out and said exactly what you said, Patrick, which is there's not only is it increasing, but the number of global CEOs looking to spend their most, the biggest chunk of their global

1:50:47 capex dollar in America. If you are going to reverse the trade flows of the last 50 years, you have to reverse the physical flows. In other words, you need to bring some of the capacity back here. You need to, and yes, that's inflationary, and that's just gonna be part of the price of admission. Maybe some of that will be offset with productivity with AI, who knows, I don't know. But ultimately, I think that it's a hugely bullish thing for the US. And I think that's part of the reason why you're seeing these companies say, all right, Trump came out and said the old deal's off. Like in every way, shape or form, Globalism is dead as it's been defined. We heard that over and over. Okay, then we're going to be more regionalist. And that means the United States is sort of in the position of Europe after World War II. Except we didn't get our factories bombed out.

1:51:40 We got them shipped overseas by a trade deal. What were growth rates in Europe after World War II from 1945 to 65? They exploded higher. Why did we – this exporting of jobs going overseas, who started it? Nixon. Gold standard. Nixon. I mean, it was a 40-year trend, right? When you really tie back to what triggered it, once the United States went off the gold standard in 71, it triggered a set of incentives that basically – Once we made the dollar, once the dollar became the reserve currency rather than gold, we suddenly had to run the deficits to supply the world the dollars. And to do that, we had to offshore this stuff to create the deficits, to supply the dollars. And it sort of worked for a time. Nixon doing that. We weren't exactly winning the Cold War in 1971. And so when we did that, that was a huge trump card that Kissinger played. It was a case of, hey, the Soviets are beating us.

1:52:40 lot of ways they can they've got way more oil way more materials but by playing that card and setting up the petrodollar we were able to print dollars for oil and commodities which is easier than lifting it out of ground for than the soviets were doing we win the cold war in a perfect world when the berlin wall came down in 89 we would have sat down had another monetary conference in 89 like a breton woods and said okay berlin wall comes down And here's the new world order. We're going to meet and we're going to say, here's what the monetary system is going to look like. Here's the new multinational organizations. Or maybe we just continue them, right? The IMF, WTU, whatever, UN, et cetera. But we didn't do that. Instead, in 89, we decided to pursue a unipolar moment in history, which is now clearly ending. And it's in our interest to end it, by the way, because it has hollowed us out too much in other directions. But we now are completely

1:53:31 dependent on that. This is the question I got, Peter. I'm sorry. Let me... I'm going to come to you. My concern is the following. Okay. If I was in the White House when Nixon was, would we have gone off the gold standard? I don't know. Was that a good decision? I don't know. I'm 60% no. Wasn't a good decision. 40%, I don't know. Right? The triangular diplomacy that we kind of look at it and say, guys, Soviet, if these guys keep getting stronger, let's help China. China moved up, whatever. We helped them from number 10, Number 11, number 9, to now number 2. And now Russia has got a smaller GDP than Canada. Canada's at 2.3. I think Russia's at 2.1. Some number like this. So we destroyed, I mean, essentially, we kind of brought them down and put them in their place. But then we built China. Now finally a guy comes in and is like, listen, guys, I'm sorry. All these deals you guys have had with

1:54:23 the previous presidents, we got to shake things up. That's a massive shakeup. By the way, you know what's hard about that massive shakeup? Do you know what's the chance of succeeding? Do you know what's the chance of Trump succeeding with this massive shakeup? It's not great. It's not. It's not. You know what my what's your opinion? What the what the I'll write a number down. Hang on. I'll write my number down. I want to hear your thoughts. OK, what do you think is the percentage of him being over six conceding that success might look different for you and me? This shift is so monumental. The shift of it going well, I would say it's under 50 percent. I'm at five percent. It's so hard. It's very hard to do that.

1:55:00 But you know what the problem is for me? So what do we do? Don't do it. Don't try. Well, and it's what you always have to look at. What's the other side if we don't do it? You always want to. If we don't do it, we know where we're going. Admiral Michael Mullen, who was a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2011, has this fascinating quote. He said, the biggest threat to America is not our debt. It's not weapons of mass destruction. It's not terrorism. It's not bioweapons. It is. It is. Excuse me. It's not bioweapons, it's not terrorism, it's our debt. He said, we are borrowing money from China to build weapons to face down China using components made in China. The US military for the last 15 years has been saying as loudly as they could, we cannot source our own military without Chinese goods. You are not a sovereign nation. If you do not have a defense industrial base, you are not a sovereign

1:55:53 nation. It simply hasn't been marked to market yet. And that started to be marked to market in COVID. Remember in COVID, we're like, oh, we need all this PPE and masks. And people look around and go, oh, it's all made in China. And then in 2022, same kind of dynamic. The head of the UN came out in, or excuse me, of NATO, Mark Rudy, came out in 2025, early last year, said the Russians, with their small GDP, are outproducing the entirety of NATO, including America, four to one. Why? Because they have an industrial base and we do not have a sufficient industrial base. And so this is one of these national security questions. This is last year. What's that? This is last year. He said it last year. Yeah, they got a little bit of a labor manufacturing balance because of the five-year Ukraine war, too. Yeah, oh, and they are, they, the... They can't measure their percent of investment on defense right now because they have a hot complex. No, no, no. This

1:56:46 isn't percentage goods. This is total goods. How many do the Russians produce? How many do the Americans produce? The Russians out produce four more times of stuff, absolute numbers. And the U.S. can't produce it, and we can't produce it without the Chinese. So part of what we're watching Trump, I think the why is so important anytime you're watching someone, anyone do anything, especially a Donald Trump. And I think Donald Trump's why in doing this is the U.S. military's why in doing this, which is if we go down this path, the Chinese will make 100 percent of the U.S. military in 10 years, in five years. And at that point, the United States is no longer a sovereign country. Well stop, end of discussion. What do you hear so often when people say, well ultimately the US military backs the dollar? Well if the Chinese make the military that backs the dollar, what do we have? We have zero. Yeah,

1:57:36 you have to recognize though the fact that we relied on the dollar's reserve currency status for decades, that allowed us to hollow out our manufacturing base and supplant it with this service sector consumer credit based economy that is harmful. But we've been living beyond our means for decades as a result of this. And yes, the sooner it ends, the better, because the longer it takes, the worse it's going to be when we have to be confronted by reality. But that is what is about to happen on not on our terms, on the world's terms.

1:58:15 They are going to move away from the U.S. dollar. It's not going to be the reserve currency. And so all of these what you what you look at as virtuous. things are going to reverse. But the only way that we can prepare for a world where the dollar is no longer the reserve currency and we cannot live beyond our means is to start now dramatically shrinking the size of our government, which is incompatible with the economy that we need to build. We need massive cuts to government spending. Instead, we've had increase in government spending.

1:58:50 We need dramatic increases in personal savings, which means we need much higher interest rates to encourage that so we can finance the investment. And we actually need to get a handle on our debt. I think we need to restructure it. I think we actually need a organized default because we now have so much debt that we have built up that if interest rates were allowed to rise to a level that would actually encourage savings, we're going to have to do that. government would have to default anyway. There is no way that we could service the debt that we have at the interest rates that we need and that we will have in a post-US dollar reserve currency world. Because if Americans can only borrow to the extent that we save, we have very little savings and everybody has massive debt. So we have to have very high interest rates in this country, but we can't afford them. And also, you know, you can't build products from strip malls. We have a country that is now

1:59:43 to distribute imports. Our biggest employers are like FedEx and UPS and Walmart and Amazon, right? We don't build the stuff that we transport and that we consume. And to do that is gonna require significant investment. in building factories, in reconstituting supply chains, in training workers. This is a monumental task. And everything we're doing right now is in the wrong direction. I got it. I got it. I got it. Okay, Rob, do you want to pull up the news that just came up with El Paso, why the reason took place? Did you guys see this or no? No. Did you get an alert? Apparently, El Paso, the reason why they shut down the airport was because there were drones flown... over cartel drones. And allegedly for that, Sky's Rine International report will close several hours Wednesday. Go a little bit lower, Rob. The FAA on Wednesday morning abruptly closed temporarily. There's no threat to commercial aviation. The agency said in a statement all flights will resume as

2:00:45 normal. New York Times Wednesday reported that the shutdown was due to military testing of counter-uncrewed aircraft, uncrewed aircraft, technology at Fort Bliss. Moments later, U.S. Transportation, Sean Duffy acted swiftly to address a cartel drone in insertion, adding that the threat has been neutralized. Speaking at a news press conference, Wednesday reported Veronica Escobar, who represents El Paso and a U.S. representative, said Duffy's explanation does not align with the information that we in Congress have been told. Mexican President Sheinbaum has disputed the reason for shutdown, saying the country's government has no knowledge of such insertion per U.S. time. So that's kind of the reports of both sides.

2:01:28 We still don't have a clue what the hell is going on. Army seems to be fretting about their flights tomorrow. Okay, there you go. So that's somebody just text me saying that just happened. Let me get to the next story here. Next story I want to go to is a fun one. Let's have some fun with this one here. Boomer Esisen is counting how much Sam Darnold makes and the Super Bowl champions or players make going to play the Super Bowl in San Francisco and And it's called the jock tax. If you're not aware of it, this video is not going to want to make you go play in the NFL and move and play in California because they tax the shit out of you. Go ahead and play this clip. For winning the Super Bowl, the winning team, each player gets $178,000. In other words, the Super Bowl isn't a part of their salary. And because the game was played in California and California has a jock tax and they look at duty days and So each team spent seven days in the

2:02:26 state of California. So those are seven duty days, and they pierce your regular salary at 3.5%. So he has to pay, when you take an account, he got the $178,000 plus his overall salary. He has to pay the state of California for spending seven days there $249,000. That's just so stupid. It really is. It ends up like a Super Bowl. No, keep playing it, Rob. Keep playing it. What happened to the audio guys? That's just so stupid. It ends up costing him $71,000 to go play in California. Now, if I'm the NFL PA, now you've got to remember, it's probably even more than that because since he's in Seattle, he's playing... He's playing against San Francisco 49ers. That's another day he's there.

2:03:20 And he's playing against the LA Rams. That's another day he's there. So he's probably had like nine or 10 duty days or maybe even more than that in the state of California. So if I'm the NFL PA, I'm like, hey, we're not playing any more Super Bowls in, you know, in California. We're just not doing it. Can you imagine that, Tom? Your thoughts? Well, you know what? This is where, you know, opportunity... Opportunity meets tax. Dems saw an opportunity and they taxed him. They say, wait a minute, these millionaire athletes, Boomer Sison played in Cincinnati. He's from Cincinnati and he's coming here for a business trip. I don't get taxed on a business trip. I go to business trips. You own business trips to all kinds of places. We went to Washington, D.C. We had to conduct a business there. We've conducted business in New York. They don't call us on the phone and say, excuse me, were you here for two days staying at a hotel?

2:04:11 Did you do a contract there? Did you do something there? They don't do it to us. These guys are on business trips. He's based working for a company called the Cincinnati, he's in Seattle. That's where his employer is, the Seahawks. He works for a company in Seattle. That's where they are. They're incorporated. But because he goes on business trips, he's, They tax him. That's why it's called the jock tax. This is opportunistic. It shouldn't be there. There is not a CMO tax. There's not a CFO tax. There's not a sales director tax that every time a sales director conducts business in some other place, if he works for Ben David... Don't give him ideas. Some states will do that to you. Technically, my understanding is you technically have to pay taxes in states where you go visit while you're, you know... I'll go bad money. I'll just do it in sped.

2:05:04 This is always bothering me. Peter, where are you at with this? Because other businesses, it doesn't happen. I can't believe that they're playing next year's Super Bowl in California, too, given these dynamics. I mean, if I were the NFL, I wouldn't have any of these games in any states that have a tax like that. I don't even know constitutionally because he's actually being taxed not just on the income that he earned playing the Super Bowl. I can understand if they want to say, look, you actually played the game in California. California. So we're going to impose our income tax on your earnings on the game only, but to go back and say, we're going to tax all of your earnings all throughout the year, just because you were here. I mean, I don't even see how that's constitutional for, for them to be able to do that. But look, I mean, California is a high tax state. They're trying to continue to find more ways to bleed the population. And when

2:05:56 they can't bleed their own population, they try to get other people that happen to be traveling through California. Look, you know, Maybe you should avoid the state completely. Just don't even go in there for a business trip. You never know you, what kind of thing you can get roped into. In fact, now a lot of the taxes that they're talking about, even if you leave the state, they want to tax you for 10 years after you're gone. So you can't even escape. Luke. Yeah, that's a rough one. They, uh, uh, it would, uh, if I was an athlete, I would frustrate me, especially given these guys have limited playing careers, uh, particularly in the NFL.

2:06:29 Uh, They do this everywhere. I mean, it's an opportunity. And look, the bigger, I think, macro picture is a lot of these states and are because, you know, lots of other places do this. Right. Like, it's very easy. Hey, I know what you make. Your contract is public information for a lot of these guys. And I know exactly when you arrive. I know exactly when you leave yours. You're on the schedule here. It's, you know, someone was telling me that the Major League Baseball teams like the players, players tax returns are like that thick. Because they play 162 games. And so we know you're in New York for six days. We know you're in Boston for six days. We know you're in Minneapolis for eight days. And we know exactly when you were there. And so they have to, so literally they have state tax returns. No, look at all the costs. They got to pay their account to file all this. Oh, yeah. No wonder. Yeah, yeah. So it is a. These

2:07:18 Dodgers, let me tell you, the Dodger fans, they're just weird people. By the way, does capitalism, Pat, let me interview you. Doesn't capitalism always find a way? Yes. The Otani contract is just the beginning. I said six months ago, I said, you know what I think could happen? You could have a Dodger player that says, I'll play at home for nothing. Just pay me my whole contract in 2035, or I'll be retired in Florida. But I will play for nothing my home games. So in California, what? No, I play for nothing. As a matter of fact, I'll play for nothing know, all year, which is basically what Otani did.

2:08:00 Yeah. Like a virgin of the Bobby Bonilla contract, right? Was there a question there? I said, I'm going to ask you, but there's no, no, no, no, no, no, no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, What else you got? Give me another one. Definitely not Puerto Rico. We're not going to Puerto Rico because those guys don't believe in security. Who else you got? Seattle. There's no income tax in the state of Washington. Okay. Seattle, Vegas, Nevada. You got a couple of these places. That's a great state. But I'm not going back to this place. All right. Let's do one other story, maybe two other stories, and then we'll wrap up. Okay? This is a weird story. I don't know what you guys are going to say about this. If

2:08:50 you have an opinion, great. If you don't, great. Great. Ty Lopez, did you guys follow the story, what happened or no? Have you been seeing what happened? So FBI probed self-help guru Ty Lopez and Ponzi's scheme that acquired Radio Shack, Pier 1 Imports. That report just came out. Now, keep in mind, a few months ago this happened. We didn't say a lot about it. We just kind of moved on. Tom, I'm going to come to you here. What is going on here? I mean, the question that you see, it's unclear whether the three defendants will be on the hook. $112 million they allegedly swindled from investors according to the SEC, but they may still face criminal charges even after settlement. Is there anything here or is this noise? I don't think it's noise when a court of jurisdiction and the SEC is leveling civil fraud against you.

2:09:44 And right now, apparently, they went out there. As the story goes, what's being reported is they said, hey, they had this company, I think they called it RevUp or Rev or something like that. They said, hey, we're going to bring Radio Shack back or bring these things back. Maybe we'll create an e-commerce play. So there is this offer. Entrepreneurs make offers all the time. And apparently Tai Lopez and some others were involved in that. Pier 1, Radio Shack, once upon a time, beloved brands in America that were retailers. So they go and do this. They get people to invest in it. The allegation is maybe they took fees and you have that over 100 million number that's being passed around in these news reports. Now, they say no criminal charges have been filed, but Tai Lopez is in settlement talks with the SEC. Whenever you see that, if you see your name in... the paper that says settlement talks at the SEC. That's probably why no criminal charges have been filed because

2:10:46 you are voluntarily at the table and you are talking to people about making this situation come to a conclusion, usually with you paying a fine, admitting no guilt, and moving on. It appears that we are at that phase, Pat. It appears here. Does it appear that Tai Lopez did nothing? That's not what these news reports are saying. And whatever Tai Lopez did, he is now at a desk with his lawyer, with the SEC, negotiating a settlement, which usually comes with paying a fine and then accepting limitations the SEC puts on you. Such as what? What could those things be? Well, you can no longer be a director in a company. You can no longer trade. You can no longer solicit. You can no longer trade? and selling of companies. There's like a list of things that they'll say you can't do. Most notably is what happened to Martha Stewart. You can't be a director on any boards. You can't have a fiduciary responsibility. Do you have

2:11:47 thoughts on this? Well, I mean, I don't have thoughts on this particular case because I'm not familiar with it, but I have a lot of thoughts on the SEC and FINRA because I think these government agencies do a lot more harm than good. I think we would be better off without them. I think a lot more... investors end up getting victimized by fraud because of these government agencies. You know, the original Ponzi scheme was Charles Ponzi. And when he ran his scheme, there was no SEC. There was no equivalent of FINRA. And that whole thing collapsed in about a year because of the free market ferreted out. But meanwhile, Bernie Madoff perpetuated a much bigger Ponzi scheme than Charles Ponzi. It went on for decades because he was protected by the SEC. He was protected by FINRA. And these government agencies lull the public into a false sense of security that because the government is watching out,

2:12:44 that they don't have to be on the lookout themselves. I think it would be much better if we didn't have the government involved, if we had more free market forces, because I think it would be harder for these scams to be perpetuated I think the markets would do a better job of policing themselves than having the government do it because it ends up being corrupted by the very people it ends up regulating, and then the investing public ends up being harmed. Anything here. You guys are good. Okay, let's move on to the next one. Last story I want to do is California, 5% tax, and then we'll wrap up. So California, where is that at, Rob? That is on... There it is. California billionaire tax will be disastrous and cause wealthy to flee, economists predict. Is this a newer story, Rob, or is that a story from, was there a video on this one, Rob? This is from February 6th. Do you have a video on this one?

2:13:39 I do. It's a little long, though. Okay, so then let me skip that one. Let me go to a different one. Tom chose this one. We'll wrap up with this one here. Nuclear sector is poised to be For its biggest IPO in years. So let's kind of go through this. Holtec International, nuclear energy company that's on the verge of reopening a shuttered reactor in Michigan, has filed confidentially with SEC to go public. It could be one of the biggest IPOs in the nuclear industry in years, likely valued at over $10 billion. Florida-based Holtec makes equipment to store nuclear waste and decommissions existing nuclear plants. The annual income is over $500 million.

2:14:17 A person familiar with its said last year the news about the IPO was reported by Axios. Tom, what do we know about this story? Well, here's what we know. nuclear next-gen reactors, I think they call them the Gen 5s or something like that, are smaller footprint. It's not like Three Mile Island or pictures of Chernobyl. It's a completely different design. But it's very, very good at making electricity or, excuse me, making the heat that spins turbines that make electricity. Because it's steam and heat and spinning turbines, that's how you make electricity. And whatever makes that heat most efficiently is good.

2:14:49 And so this company has now bought a defunct power plant, is retrofitting it. And this is just the beginning. It has been three decades, I believe, since we've had a green light foundational construction permit for nuclear in the US. And this is what we need because with data centers coming online and all of the EV usage, nevermind the current headlines about maybe EV, Tesla's down because others are up, EVs are still being sold even if it's not the volume it was yesteryear. And that power is used by people at night. So guess what? YOU'VE GOT DATA CENTERS, YOU'VE GOT INCREASING USE OF EVs, AND WE NEED ENERGY TO PROVIDE THAT. AND WE DON'T WANT TO DO FOSSIL FUEL. THERE'S THE GREENS THAT ARE OUT THERE TRYING TO PREVENT THAT.

2:15:35 And so nuclear come back. We've been talking on this podcast about it, Pat, for two years. And here we have a company under Trump is now going to have an IPO to go forward and to retrofit this one, build the others. We need more power in America. This is a very good thing. And when you hear the word nuclear, don't think about Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. These are modern, small footprint, much safer, more highly regulated plants. And now we're going to have one trading a company, Holtec, trading publicly. Well, I agree. I'm a big fan of nuclear power. If you want me to give Trump credit, I'll give him credit there. At least the administration has a positive. The guys, the man can do it. Oh, my gosh. It took the last 10 seconds of the podcast to be able to give credit. Two hours, 21 minutes, and 13 seconds we get there. Yeah, I think it's a very big positive. We've been very bullish to our clients for a number

2:16:30 of years on electrical infrastructure equities. And I think we are still in the, or, you know, maybe we're coming to the end of the beginning in terms of the open field running for the rebuilding of U.S. electrical infrastructure. And I think this kind of fits right into that. Brandon, any thoughts? Yeah, no brainer. We've been talking about it for years. It's the best energy. I don't know why we haven't been building it, so it's good that we're building it now. Yeah, fantastic. I'm excited about it. Look, I went in on a handful of the companies, and we talked about this, I think, a year ago. I don't think there's a choice. I think they have to go. The whole thing becomes – is messaging. Use the word nuclear, people freak out. Like if I said today Peter Schiff is on OnlyFans, you would think Peter Schiff is, you know, doing, you know, feed videos and stuff like that. But maybe it's, what do you get? Financial advice, right? So we have to be able

2:17:20 to reposition the verbiage with nuclear. And I think, I think that's marketing. I think that's marketing, storytelling, education. Hopefully we'll figure it out. Guys, this was great. It was good having you on. Luke, we've never met. Very impressed. Really, really like your analysis. Peter, you definitely like the camera. You definitely shine when you got the camera. You got a lot of strong opinions, and I appreciate you coming down. It's always good to have a good back-and-forth discussion. The audience wins. Everybody else, God bless. I think we'll do it again on tomorrow. Oh, shoot, tomorrow. That's right.

2:17:53 Tomorrow we got this guy. You guys may or may not know him. Very calm, settled, relaxed guy. Alex Jones will be on a podcast tomorrow morning. Really? We have no clue what he's going to be saying. He's coming here? He's coming here. He'll be here tomorrow. Take care, buddy. God bless. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Epstein's Co-Conspirators Named + Trump's $100K Dow Prediction | PBD #736"?

Peter Schiff (Guest), Luke Groman (Guest), Luke Gorman (Guest), Congressman Adam Smith (Guest).

What is "Epstein's Co-Conspirators Named + Trump's $100K Dow Prediction | PBD #736" about?

The discussion centers on various current events, including the recent shutdown of the El Paso airport and the implications of Epstein's co-conspirators being named in newly released files. Additionally, guests debate the future of gold and cryptocurrencies, aiming to forecast market trends and the potential economic impact of these developments.

What is mentioned in this PBD Podcast episode?

72 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Peter Schiff, Donald Trump, Luke Groman, Gold, Jeffrey Epstein, Bitcoin. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Epstein's Co-Conspirators Named + Trump's $100K Dow Prediction | PBD #736"?

The episode runs 2 h 18 min; the transcript is about 26,156 words in 169 timestamped sections.

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